Michelson Diagnostics Ltd. of Orpington, UK, has been awarded a £140,000 grant for research and development by the London Development Agency. The monies will be used to develop a prototype medical scanner for use in lung cancer surgery. The company’s goal is to provide a noninvasive alternative to surgical biopsy in clinical applications such as lung, cervical, esophageal and skin cancer by offering an optical coherence tomography scanner that images subsurface tissue structures and displays the images at high resolution.

In other news, the company has started an instrument engineering consultancy service called MDL Innovations. It will focus on optical design, optical instruments development and the transfer of technologies between the industrial and biomedical fields. It also will take requests from clients and will consist of six specialists in the related fields of optical design/Zemax systems and software/C, C++, C#, .NET, mechanical design/SolidWorks and program management.