Tiresias: an illustrative analogy

"I am interested in things that change the world or that affect the future"

Elon Musk

My friends,

We in Optiscan are waiting. Tiresias understands, that for mortals, waiting is the hardest thing. Whilst we wait however, whilst we await news of the FDA applications; whilst we wait for Carl Zeiss to make the next move and start installing the CONVIVO outside the pre-eminent brain tumour neurosurgical centres, centres including those in Australia; whilst we wait results of oral cancer studies; whilst we wait for the delayed breast cancer study results; whilst we wait for news of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, whilst we wait, and whilst we wait, Tiresias thought that he might tell a story, an analogy, illustrative of how a technology much less applicable than Optiscan, can rise. What Tiresias is talking about is Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), which has made huge progress in 20 years. OCT is technology, interesting and useful, but far less widely applicable than Optiscan’s Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy (CLE).

OCT has come to the fore in the last 10 years after decades of development. It is a form of near red light imaging technique, using optical scattering from biological tissue, to form a tomographic (two-dimensional slice) picture of a millimetre or two thickness, akin to ultrasound, but on a micrometre level. In comparison to Optican’s Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy, which produces nanometre scale micrography of 1000X magnification, OCT magnification is 10X, producing only tissue level and not cell and subcellular level micrography. In other words, Optiscan CLE magnification is 100X of OCT magnification. To Re-iterate, OCT gives tissue level imaging whereas Optiscan produces cell and sub-cellular level imaging at 100X the magnification of OCT. OCT’s only current application is imaging the retina. It was initially an instrument introduced for ophthalmologist specialising in retinal diseases. Within 10 years it has become an essential instrument in every ophthalmologist’s office, and now, increasingly, optometrists’ office, and soon to be in every optometrist’s office. In 10 years, the value of this market to the manufacturers of OCT equipment, just another tool in highly tooled up ophthalmologist’s optometrist’s offices, has grown to $1 billion per year. How has this happened? First, the instrument was marketed to ophthalmologist and optometrist, who are already technology and instrument savvy, and like technical tools. It gives some marginal utility for ophthalmologists but little utility to optometrist. However, importantly, both can charge for doing an OCT examination, every time you and I visit an ophthalmologist or an optometrist. Thus, this OCT instrument, imaging a patch of retinal tissues, several centimetres square and a couple of millimetres, has annual sales of $1 billion. Optiscan Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy provides real-time digital histopathology which will be essential for all cancer surgery and cancer screening. Tiresias sees every cancer operating theatre in the world, every oral medicine, ENT, dermatology and skin clinic, every gastroenterology endoscopy theatre, every cervical cancer screening clinic, and many more, being unable to practice without Optiscan. You, my friends, do the sums.