• Home >
• Web Exclusives >
• Industry News

Photonics Industry News

• StockerYale to supply optical assemblies under multimillion-dollar biomedical deal
  January 8, 2009--StockerYale, Inc. (Salem, NH) has announced its largest biomedical contract to date--a supply agreement with Boston Scientific, worldwide developer, manufacturer of medical devices whose products are used in many interventional medical specialties. The agreement calls for StockerYale to supply optical assemblies to Boston Scientific for various medical and surgical applications. The deal represents an effort to leverage StockerYale's IP into fast-growing markets.
• Energetiq Technology secures Series C funding for short-wavelength light sources
  January 7, 2009--Energetiq Technology (Woburn, MA), developer and manufacturer of specialized short-wavelength light products for applications in biooptics and semiconductor manufacturing applications, raised additional capital in its Series C round of financing. The financing was led by a new investor, Ushio (Tokyo, Japan), and supported by existing investors including Intel Capital and Shea Ventures.
• LightLab takes lead in intracoronary OCT imaging
  January 7, 2009--LightLab Imaging (Westford, MA) announced several important developments in the field this past year that it says significantly increased its leadership position in intravascular optical coherence tomography (OCT). LightLab is using its portfolio of proprietary technology to design, manufacture, and sell intravascular OCT systems that aid interventional cardiologists in the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease.
• Lumenis wins FDA approval for its surgical CO2 laser
  January 6, 2009--Lumenis (Santa Clara, CA), a developer, manufacturer, and seller of laser, light-based, and radiofrequency devices for surgical, aesthetic, and ophthalmic applications, announced U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and market introduction of its new AcuPulse CO2 Laser for gynecology, neurosurgery, general surgery, and aesthetic medicine.
• USDA picks Headwall's spectral imagers for food inspection and safety
  January 2, 2009--Headwall Photonics (Fitchburg, MA) announced the formation of a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the USDA Agricultural Research Service (Washington, DC) to develop and deploy spectral-imaging hardware for in-line processing of poultry, fruit, vegetables, and other food products.
• Advanced Photonix subsidiary Picometrix wins more terahertz contracts
  December 31, 2008--Advanced Photonix announced that its subsidiary, Picometrix (Ann Arbor, MI), was selected to received a Phase II SBIR contract from NASA and a Phase I SBIR contract from the U.S. Air Force for nondestructive testing (NDT) applications development utilizing the T-Ray 4000 terahertz system. The combined contracts total $700,000.
• LEDs to illuminate bigger and better New Year's Eve ball in Times Square
  December 30, 2008--The New York Post reports that "Everything else in the economy may be shrinking, but there's one thing that's getting bigger: the ball that drops on New Year's Eve." On Nov. 11, Times Square Alliance and Countdown Entertainment revealed a new ball that's double the size of previous balls at 12 feet in diameter and weighs nearly six tons--all being lit from within by thousands of light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
• Medical imaging company acquires Axsun Technologies for its OCT expertise
  December 30, 2008--Volcano Corporation (San Diego, CA), developer of products for the diagnosis and treatment of coronary and peripheral artery disease, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Axsun Technologies (Billerica, MA), a privately held company that develops lasers and optical engines used in optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging systems and photonic components and subsystems used in other industrial applications.
• Semiconductor lasers enable high-rate quality random-number generation
  December 29, 2008--Sequences of random numbers are vital to such applications as computer simulations, statistics, and cryptography--but current methods of generating them are challenged by increasing data-processing demands. Now a group of Japanese scientists has found that the physical chaos present in semiconductor lasers can produce good-quality random number sequences at 1.7 Gbps; the team predicts laser-based schemes as high as 10 Gbps in the future.
• Group sets record for optical delay with new nanocavity-array waveguide
  December 29, 2008--At NTT Basic Research Laboratories (Atsugi, Japan), scientists have developed a waveguide--an array of more than 100 photonic crystal cavities--capable of slowing light to one-hundredth its normal speed. The coupled optical microresonator shows promise for advanced signal processing and optical memory applications.