Axsun Technologies, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Volcano Corporation (Nasdaq: VOLC), today announced the initial development and successful testing of a novel integrated light source architecture for OCT imaging. Axsun believes this proprietary optical engine design raises the bar on imaging speed and overcomes fundamental limitations of laser-based designs for swept source OCT light sources. This approach to optical engines builds on over 10 years of Axsun's core integrated light source technology and is protected by a number of issued patents. The core technology is based on a non-laser source of photons and is called the High Definition Swept Source (or "HDSS(TM)") because it is expected to enable high resolution at unprecedented speeds in medical imaging systems. Axsun's HDSS has been tested at breakthrough speeds of 200kHz - approximately 4 to 10 times faster than commercially available OCT imaging systems - all while maintaining the extraordinarily compact size, ultra-high reliability and low-cost volume manufacturability that Axsun is known for.
"Axsun is a leading developer and supplier of tunable lasers for OCT imaging, offering the highest speed integrated optical products on the market today," explained Dale Flanders, President of Axsun. "We are thrilled to further advance the speed and performance of OCT imaging with HDSS, and are very excited by the performance potential of this unique non-laser architecture. The HDSS light source will be made available to our parent company Volcano in the vascular imaging field, where we expect HDSS will enable unprecedented imaging speed, resolution and 3D image detail in Volcano's future multi-modality imaging systems. Furthermore, the imaging speed, resolution, size, weight and durability enabled by the HDSS should open up vast areas of imaging in OCT and spectroscopy applications. We will work with Volcano to examine various partnership and vertical market opportunities for this very exciting new addition to the Axsun product portfolio."