Optical coherence tomography (OCT) allows the 3D imaging of skin tissue on a depth scale of ~1-2mm with resolution ~10um. It has been described as an optical analog of ultrasound imaging and offers significantly better resolution than MRI and ultrasound. It has already gained clinical acceptance in ophthalmology and is emerging into other fields such as oncology, monitoring wound healing, cardiology, and guided surgery. The advantages of OCT include:- Video rate images of sub-surface morphology at resolutions ~100 better than ultrasound and voxel rates ~1000 higher than microscopy. Label-free imaging of the sample (in vivo or in vitro). Non-ionizing radiation. Non-contact Endoscopic OCT is ideal for imaging 1~2mm below the surface in biological tissue. Our project is concerned with the development of a prototype swept laser source with 200 - 300 nm sweep range providing sub cellular resolution. We will develop the laser system and trial it in an OCT imagining system.

Michelson Diagnostics is an independent UK start-up which has launched the world's first CEmarked, FDA-cleared OCT scanner for diagnosis & monitoring of non-melanoma skin cancer and other skin conditions. Our 'VivoSight' scanner is already being used in a small number of dermatology clinics in USA and Germany on a commercial basis and has the support of leading dermatologists. Non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most common type of cancer in the developed world, cases outnumbering all other cancers worldwide. It is particularly common in elderly people with Caucasian skin type. Recent papers state that more than $2BN is spent annually in the US on NMSC, and the number of new cases there is > 3.5M p.a. and growing 4% p.a. Currently, NMSC is diagnosed visually and by taking a skin biopsy. Visual diagnosis is inaccurate; biopsy is painful, costly ($150+), slow (2 weeks for result) and leaves a scar. Our VivoSight scanner is set to revolutionise the diagnosis & treatment of NMSC by providing a real time view of sub-surface skin structure enabling cancer nests to be directly visualised. This enables immediate decisions on the diagnosis and location of treatment saving time and money and reducing number of unnecessary biopsies and surgery. Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) utilises high speed data acquisition & data processing algorithms, to produce a real time sub-surface image of skin tissue. The 'state of the art' is to use a PC Workstation equipped with expensive DAQ cards for this task. This means that the OCT system is bulky, expensive, and has limited video frame rate. Our dermatologist customers demand compact & affordable scanners with high video frame rate. 'OCTADE' will involve development and evaluation of a prototype digital processor card to replace the PC Workstation. This will enable development & launch of a smaller, lighter, faster scanner that is less costly to build, resulting in much faster customer adoption and much greater profitability.

The Industrial Doctorate Centre in Molecular Modelling and Materials Science (M3S) at University College London (UCL) trains researchers in materials science and simulation of industrially important applications. As structural and physico-chemical processes at the molecular level largely determine the macroscopic properties of any material, quantitative research into this nano-scale behaviour is crucially important to the design and engineering of complex functional materials. The M3S IDC is a highly multi-disciplinary 4-year EngD programme, which works in partnership with a large base of industrial sponsors on a variety of projects ranging from catalysis to thin film technology, electronics, software engineering and bio-physics research. The four main research themes within the Centre are 1) Energy Materials and Catalysis; 2) Information Technology and Software Engineering; 3) Nano-engineering for Smart Materials; and 4) Pharmaceuticals and Bio-medical Engineering. These areas of research align perfectly with EPSRC's mission programmes: Energy, the Digital Economy, and Nanoscience through Engineering to Application. In addition, per definition an industrial doctorate centre is important to EPSRC's priority areas of Securing the Future Supply of People and Towards Better Exploitation. Students at the M3S IDC follow a tailor-made taught programme of specialist technical courses, as well as professionally accredited project management courses and transferable skills training, which ensures that whatever their first degree, on completion all students will have obtained thorough technical and managerial schooling as well as a doctoral research degree. The EngD research is industry-led and of comparable high quality and innovation as the more established PhD research degree. However, as the EngD students spend approximately 70% of their time on site with the industrial sponsor, they also gain first hand experience of the demanding research environment of a successful, competitive industry. Industrial partners who have taken up the opportunity during the first phase of the EngD programme to add an EngD researcher to their R&D teams include Johnson Matthey, Pilkington Glass, Exxon Mobil, Silicon Graphics, Accelrys and STS, while new companies are added to the pool of sponsors each year. Materials research in UCL is particularly well developed, with a thriving Centre for Materials Research and a newly established Materials Chemistry Centre. In addition, the Bloomsbury campus has perhaps the largest concentration of computational materials scientists in the UK, if not the world. Although affiliated to different UCL departments, all computational materials researchers are members of the UCL Materials Simulation Laboratory, which is active in advancing the development of common computational methodologies and encouraging collaborative research between the members. As such, UCL has a large team of well over a hundred research-active academic staff available to supervise research projects, ensuring that all industrial partners will be able to team up with an academic in a relevant research field to form the supervisory team to work with the EngD student. The success of the existing M3S Industrial Doctorate Centre and the obvious potential to widen its research remit and industrial partnerships into new, topical materials science areas, which are at the heart of EPSRC's strategic funding priorities for the near future, has led to this proposal for the funding of 5 annual cohorts of ten EngD students in the new phase of the Centre from 2009.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.