Archive for April 2009

Cardiac imaging and OCT's legal mess

April 20, 2009 4:06 PM by Barbara Goode

"Word is getting out” about imaging tools that enable more precise guidance during heart surgery, said Volcano Corp. VP Joe Burnett, referring to the increased number of imaging-related presentations at the recent American College of Cardiology (ACC) Annual Meeting 2009.) Speaking at the conference, former ACC President Pamela Douglas, M.D. said that imaging is growing faster than all other procedures, services and diagnostic tests.

Many of the talks focused on intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT), either pitting the approaches against each other or demonstrating their complementary use. Volcano has a foot in each camp, bolstered during the past year by acquisitions of IVUS developer Novelis and OCT developer Axsun. The latter launched a legal battle because last summer, Axsun entered into a multi-year exclusive agreement with another supplier of cardiac OCT systems, LightLab Imaging (Westford, MA). Under the agreement, Axsun would supply advanced tunable lasers for LightLab’s swept-source OCT systems.

We’re still waiting for the final answer to the question, “What happens when the company you acquire has supply agreements with your competitors?” but for now, a Superior Court injunction, in response to a complaint by LightLab, is prohibiting Volcano from using Axsun tunable lasers in its OCT products.



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MEMS-enabled PUMA: Look at the possibilities

April 8, 2009 1:00 PM by Howard Lovy

I feel like it is 1909, rather than 2009, as I hear a derisive chorus of "get a horse" from much of the media mocking the MEMS-enabled PUMA prototype electric vehicle from General Motors and Segway.

An automotive correspondent from Newsweek wrote on Twitter that he "thinks the GM Segway vehicle is a farce." And even the editor of Wired.com, who should know how to spot possibilities better than other journalists, Tweeted: "NOte to GM: car with no door = FAIL."

It is likely the PUMA uses the same MEMS gyro/accelerometer cluster as the Segway, which last I heard was supplied by the UK MEMS company Silicon Sensing Systems.

The mockery doesn't say much for the vision of many in my profession ... again. It seems like members of the news media -- the survivors who are left employed, anyway -- would have learned from the recent past to recognize the early stages of something that could potentially change everything. But, even now as newspapers close and bleed jobs, many continue to lovingly clutch onto their dinosaurs, failing to look up to see the meteor looming in the sky.

A century ago, those funny, noisy, slow horseless carriages seemed as much a ridiculous joke as perhaps the rickety-looking GM/Segway electric carriage might seem now. But, as most Small Times readers know, the thing to look for is not always right in front of you. We cover, for the most part, enabling technologies -- the invisible "stuff" on the inside that enhances existing products or enables new ones.

Like the Segway, itself -- also a subject of tech-writer derision when first unveiled -- entrepreneurs look at the capabilities of a prototype like the PUMA and see how the enabling technologies can be used to fit their own visions of how a "smart" vehicle should run.

Writers based in New York, or Detroit, at times fail to realize that the world does not necessarily look like their own familiar surroundings. Newly prosperous residents of jam-packed cities in Asia, for example, are all looking to become "American-style" consumers. But the level of traffic congestion that would suggest is not possible if we are truly going to reduce greenhouse gases.

Let 'em walk, ride bikes or take buses? Easy for the current "haves" to say.

No, I look at the PUMA, and see possibilities. And, I suspect, so do the engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs who read these pages.



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