Age‐related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of legal blindness in elderly people. Neovascular AMD (nAMD) is responsible for the majority of cases of severe visual loss in eyes with AMD. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is the most widely used technology for the diagnosis and follow‐up of nAMD patients, which is widely used to study and guide the clinical approach, as well as to predict and evaluate treatment response. The aim of this review is to describe and analyze various structural OCT‐based biomarkers, which have practical value during both initial assessment and treatment follow‐up of nAMD patients. While central retinal thickness has been the most common and one of the first OCT identified biomarkers, today, other qualitative and quantitative biomarkers provide novel insight into disease activity and offer superior prognostic value and better guidance for tailored therapeutic management. The key importance of retinal fluid compartmentalization (intraretinal fluid, subretinal fluid, and subretinal pigment epithelium (RPE) fluid) will be discussed firstly. In the second part, the structural alterations of different retinal layers in various stages of the disease (photoreceptors layer integrity, hyperreflective dots, outer retinal tubulations, subretinal hyperreflective material, and retinal pigment epithelial tears) will be analyzed in detail. The last part of the review will focus on how alterations of the vitreoretinal interface (vitreomacular adhesion and traction) and of the choroid (sub‐RPE hyperreflective columns, prechoroidal clefts, choroidal caverns, choroidal thickness and choroidal volume, and choroidal vascular index) interact with nAMD progression. OCT technology is evolving very quickly, and new retinal biomarkers are continuously described. This up‐to‐date review article provides a comprehensive description on how structural OCT‐based biomarkers provide a valuable tool to monitor the progression of the disease and the treatment response in nAMD patients. Thus, in this perspective, clinicians will be able to allocate hospital resources in the best possible way and tailor treatment to the individual patient’s needs.

The translation of light-based technologies into the clinic has been growing over the past decades. Biophotonics tools are starting to account for a larger proportion of next-generation diagnostic and therapeutic modalities, given that they provide information of tissue functionality and composition with minimal invasiveness. One of the major challenges in advancing biophotonics-based medical devices is transforming signals into useful information that can assist the clinicians in the treatment and diagnosis of diseases.¹ In this work, we contribute to the understanding of a potential application of an existent light-based technology for localized air volume assessment in lung tissue.

In vivo tissue imaging is an essential tool for medical diagnosis, surgical guidance, and treatment. However, specular reflections caused by glossy tissue surfaces can significantly degrade image quality and hinder the accuracy of imaging systems. In this work, we further the miniaturisation of specular reflection reduction techniques using micro cameras, which have the potential to act as intra-operative supportive tools for clinicians. In order to remove these specular reflections, two small form factor camera probes, handheld at 10 mm footprint and miniaturisable to 2.3 mm, are developed using different modalities, with line-of-sight to further miniaturisation. (1) The sample is illuminated via multi-flash technique from four different positions, causing a shift in reflections which are then filtered out in a post-processing image reconstruction step. (2) The cross-polarisation technique integrates orthogonal polarisers onto the tip of the illumination fibres and camera, respectively, to filter out the polarisation maintaining reflections. These form part of a portable imaging system that is capable of rapid image acquisition using different illumination wavelengths, and employs techniques that lend themselves well to further footprint reduction. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed system with validating experiments on tissue-mimicking phantoms with high surface reflection, as well as on excised human breast tissue. We show that both methods can provide clear and detailed images of tissue structures along with the effective removal of distortion or artefacts caused by specular reflections. Our results suggest that the proposed system can improve the image quality of miniature in vivo tissue imaging systems and reveal underlying feature information at depth, for both human and machine observers, leading to better diagnosis and treatment outcomes.

Capillary electrochromatography (CEC) is a separation technique that hybridizes liquid chromatography (LC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE). The selectivity offered by LC stationary phase results in rapid separations, high efficiency, high selectivity, minimal analyte and buffer consumption. Chip-based CE and CEC separation techniques are also gaining interest, as the microchip can provide precise on-chip control over the experiment. Capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C⁴D) offers the contactless electrode configuration, and thus is not in contact with the solutions under investigation. This prevents contamination, so it can be easy to use as well as maintain. This study investigated a chip-based CE/CEC with C⁴D technique, including silicon-based microfluidic device fabrication processes with packaging, design and optimization. It also examined the compatibility of the silicon-based CEC microchip interfaced with C⁴D. In this paper, the authors demonstrated a nanofabrication technique for a novel microchip electrochromatography (MEC) device, whose capability is to be used as a mobile analytical equipment. This research investigated using samples of potassium ions, sodium ions and aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid).

In this paper, we present the design and fabrication of a novel chip-on-tip catheter, which uses a microcamera and optical fibres to capture in vivo images in a beating porcine heart thanks to a saline flush to clear the blood field. Here, we demonstrate the medical utility and mechanical robustness of this catheter platform system, which could be used for other optical diagnostic techniques, surgical guidance, and clinical navigation. We also discuss some of the challenges and system requirements associated with developing a miniature prototype for such a study and present assembly instructions. Methods of clearing the blood field are discussed, including an integrated flush channel at the distal end. This permits the capture of images of the endocardial walls. The device was navigated under fluoroscopic guiding, through a guiding catheter to various locations of the heart, where images were successfully acquired. Images were captured at the intra-atrial septum, in the left atrium after a trans-septal cross procedure, and in the left ventricle, which are, to the best of our knowledge, the first images captured in an in vivo beating heart using endoscopic techniques.