Boston Micromachines Awarded $750K NEI Grant

Boston Micromachines Corp. (BMC) of Watertown, Mass., a provider of microelectromechanical (MEMS)-based mirror products for adaptive optics systems, announced that it has been awarded a $750,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Eye Institute (NEI) of the National Institutes of Health to advance the research and diagnosis of eye diseases in the elderly. BMC said the grant will allow the company and its research partner, the School of Optometry at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., to develop an adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope (AOSLO) instrument capable of high-resolution retinal imaging of 95 percent of the population. "As the first instrument to provide the combination of high-resolution and high-amplitude wavefront correction using a single deformable mirror, this new system will have tremendous implications for our elderly population, whose aging eyes have more aberrations and suffer from debilitating eye diseases," said Paul Bierden, president of BMC.