In conversation with the co-founder of British startup Siloton

Siloton co-founder and chief executive, Dr Alasdair Price, has outlined the development of technology that could one day lead to the development of portable optical coherence tomography (OCT) devices.

In conversation with OT for the February March The emerging technology and future practice edition, Price described how photonic chips incorporate the core elements of optical systems present in optical practice on a small chip.

Chips are printed on a piece of material called a ‘wafer’ with the individual chips then cut from this sheet.

“That brings the cost down but it also brings up the scalability,” Price observed.

“On top of that, because it is a single piece of material rather than lots of discrete components, it is a lot more robust,” he added.

Price highlighted that the company is aiming to develop a standalone binocular OCT system. The device will not be tethered and will have a base station for charging.

“Right now, we are on the road to that. Our end goal is to have a binocular system that you pick up, you press a button that turns it on and when you press it to your face everything runs automatically,” Price said.

He shared that the chips were originally designed in 2022.

“That chip was always designed to be a bit lower spec. What we were doing is that we were proving that it worked,” Price said.

“We are now making our second generation of chip, and we have started the design work on that now,” he noted.

Price said that the chip specification would sit in the low to mid-range of what is currently available.

“In the long-run, we could improve that image quality even further. However, it really depends on what is most needed,” he shared.

Price added that for monitoring disease progression in the home, a lower image quality may be sufficient for this application.

“If we can image more people, and image them on a more regular basis then there is huge value in that,” he emphasised.