The Centre of New Technologies for Medicine (CNTM) develops new diagnostic techniques, with special emphasis on the area of ophthalmology imaging, taking advantage of its close cooperation with the Centre for Clinical Trials.

The prevalence of eye diseases leading to vision loss, such as Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) and Glaucoma, is increasing globally as the numbers of older people increase in populations around the world. Until recently, medical science had little to offer. With the advent of medical therapies more patients are now offered the hope of slowing or arresting visual initial decline and, in some situations, it is even possible to reverse the trend toward progressive vision loss.
Fundus imaging is of paramount importance for early and accurate diagnosis, guide the induction and to evaluate the response to therapy.

Furthermore, new developments in fundus imaging offer new and particularly attractive perspectives for predicting development of coronary heart disease and stroke. The goal of non-invasive fundus imaging to evaluate the entire human circulation has never been closer.

CNTM has launched the concept of Multimodal Macula Mapping and has developed new tools to correlate information obtained from sequential fundus imaging, a still ongoing work.

The objective of CNTM is to transfer technology innovations to Industry. The excellence of the work developed in CNTM is well demonstrated by the present partnerships with Industry and Academic Centres and by frequent publications in peer reviewed scientific journals.

This Centre pursues the characterisation and validation of new technologies, as well as the construction of prototypes in different phases of development, inspection and calibration of opto-electronical medical devices. For this purpose, it has certified and calibrated equipment with NIST traceability (National Institute of Standards and Technology). These equipments include instruments enabling the analyses of spectrum in visible, infrared near, UV near and also the possibility of analysing laser beam profiles. It also has various detectors of light power at its disposal, in this way guaranteeing the necessary safety conditions and maintenance of equipment.

Due to the large experience on fluorescence measurements, confocal scanning laser systems and a partnership with Pfizer, a new patent was granted (International Publication Number WO 2008/067525) claiming a new technology for fluorescence quantification on ocular media. The work of this group has already resulted in a patent (US Patent Number 6,013,034) for an ocular fluorometer for clinical use, the "Photodiode Array Ocular Fluorometer" (PAF).

Areas of expertise

• Development of methodologies for the measurement of blood-retinal barrier (BRB) permeability of the human retina, in vivo, for fluorescein.
• Multimodal Macular Mapping. The gathering of information obtained through various imaging techniques in order to establish a correlation between various parameters of the retina providing a global vision of the ongoing alterations as well as its space-time relation.
• Processing of Medical Images. The application of the most recent processing techniques of medical images to the various types of eye fundus imaging offers new perspectives on the subject and facilitates the follow-up in the daily medical practice.