EDINBURGH’S Heriot-Watt University has hailed a manufacturing “breakthrough”, which it says enables fibre-optic medical devices with applications including laser surgery and cancer detection to be made in a fraction of the time previously needed.

Its advance involves the use of laser beam shaping techniques. The university expressed hopes its breakthrough would “accelerate adoption of new devices to improve patient care”.

Heriot-Watt University noted that fibre-optic medical devices are used for the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases.

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It said: "A previously developed suite of highly innovative thin and flexible optical devices has been demonstrated for the future diagnosis and treatment of a range of conditions. The devices, however, require complex systems of micro-optic lenses, mirrors, and prisms, like a microscope, at their end (distal-end microsystems). These systems have the potential to transform the delivery of procedures like key-hole surgeries and biopsies."

However, it declared that “up to now, these devices have been very expensive to make, and it has limited the adoption of new breakthrough and innovative devices by hospitals and clinics”.

The university said its technique has "dramatically reduced manufacturing time for the optical systems from hours to just a few minutes".

Robert Thomson, the Heriot-Watt University professor who led the project team which developed the new manufacturing technique, said: “Medical device technologies are vital for the detection and treatment of a huge number of diseases and healthcare challenges. Increasingly, micro-devices are being developed for minimally invasive measurement and therapy, for example in cancer detection and precision laser surgery.

“However, up to now, they have been very expensive to produce. Coming up with a medical device innovation is exciting but if it can’t be made commercially, it won’t be used in hospitals and clinics. To encourage take-up of state-of-the-art devices, it is vital to provide low-cost and highly repeatable manufacturing solutions.”

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He added: “We’ve achieved a major manufacturing advance using laser beam shaping techniques. This gives us control of the shape of the focal volume, and therefore more efficient use of the available laser pulse energy during manufacture. We’ve overcome a major drawback of using ultrafast laser inscription techniques for manufacturing distal-end microsystems for fibre-optic medical instruments.”

The team also developed new micro-optic systems for applications in “minimally invasive” precision microsurgery using ultrafast laser pulses delivered by specialist hollow core fibres developed by the University of Bath.

The advances were unveiled as part of a wider report on the university’s five-year, £1.3 million, 4MD Platform grant, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which is part of UK Research and Innovation.

The other 18 projects funded by this grant for the university included a new technique to sterilise ambulances using ultraviolet light, and work on an ultrasound needle to better position epidurals during labour.

Heriot-Watt University professor Duncan Hand said: “Our overarching objective was to use the flexibility of the Platform grant to develop and exploit manufacturing technologies to provide medical device manufacture that is both practical and commercially viable, leading to new and improved healthcare solutions.”

He added: “The 4MD Platform grant has led to £11.3m of follow-on funding for translational research and the development of medical devices, including the creation of the Medical Device Manufacturing Centre.”

The Medical Device Manufacturing Centre is a partnership between Heriot-Watt University, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow, and Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.