Inventor recalls eye imaging breakthrough
Inventor recalls eye imaging breakthrough
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/21/1134945/inventor-recalls-eye-imaging-breakthrough/
Publish Date: 2026-04-21 17:00:00
Source Domain: www.technologyreview.com
“It uses infrared light that’s barely visible compared to the bright flash of fundus photography [another common method of eye imaging] and provides a lot more information—three-dimensional rather than two-dimensional information—at higher resolution,” Huang says. The discovery earned him and his co-inventors slots in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2025 as well as the Lasker Award and the National Medals of Technology and Innovation in 2023.
Huang didn’t expect to change the paradigm of eye imaging when he began studying electrical engineering as an undergraduate at MIT, but he was interested in using an engineering mindset to contribute to medical advancements. That, he thought, could be his way to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a family practitioner.
OCT emerged from his work as an MD-PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. While studying ultrafast lasers at MIT under James Fujimoto ’79, SM ’81, PhD ’84, the Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering, Huang was tasked with using the lasers to improve various ophthalmological tasks, including measuring the thickness of the cornea and retina.
Huang thought an approach known as interferometry, which could measure the time of flight down to one quadrillionth of a second, could improve thickness measurements to micrometer resolution. Huang’s experiments revealed that the technique was able to detect very faint signals arising from fine internal structures within the retina. Fujimoto and Huang realized the potential for inventing a new type of imaging and enlisted the help of Eric Swanson, SM ’84, who was using interferometry for intersatellite communications at Lincoln Laboratory, to develop an OCT machine for biological applications. Huang tested the new machine on several types of tissues accessed through Harvard Medical School and found it particularly successful in imaging retinal and coronary artery samples. He and…
