Inventor recalls eye imaging breakthrough

Optical coherence tomography (OCT, a technique that uses infrared light to create detailed 3D images of internal body structures like the retina) was invented by David Huang and colleagues at MIT and Harvard Medical School, and is now used in 40 million medical procedures annually. The technology emerged from Huang's work combining ultrafast lasers with interferometry (a measurement method that detects extremely precise time delays of light waves) to achieve micrometer-level resolution imaging of tissue. Huang's success came from collaborating across medical and engineering disciplines, and the invention has since been refined for new applications in eye imaging.