The LITE Project’s Catalan team begins a busy September

The teams of the Catalan partners involved in the European LITE project, The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) and the Institut de la Màcula, met on 19 September at the ICFO’s facilities in Castelldefels to plan and organise the final months of the programme. This innovative international eye research project has completed all its phases to arrive at the construction of a multifunctional prototype that acquires and integrates images of the anterior and posterior segments of the eye, with high spatial resolution and label-free modality. The commencement of LITE (Development of Advanced Laser Imaging Techniques for the anterior and posterior Eye) dates back to December 2013 and the results obtained are expected to be presented at the end of this year.

LITE also played a major part at the B·Debate held in early September in Barcelona, where Dr. David Merino (ICFO) explained it in detail. He said that the techniques utilised enable researchers to study the same areas of the retina at different points in time and to identify the same photoreceptor cells. «The images acquired with these methods will provide us with new information about the degenerative processes affecting patients» De Merino added. Meanwhile, Dr. Pablo Loza (ICFO) discussed the basics of the tools that represent the backbone of LITE (two-photon excitation fluorescence (TPEF), second-harmonic generation (SHG), Raman, etc).

In addition, a poster devoted to LITE explained details of the microscopic retinal images obtained by Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Opthalmoscopy (AOSLO).

Pablo Loza, Lucia Lee Ferraro, Marc Biarnés, David Merino, Jordi Monés i Miriam Garcia. B·Debate. 6th and 7th september. CaixaForum, Barcelona

The LITE European project is co-funded by ACCIÓ (Catalan Agency for Business Competitiveness) and the European Union through the Seventh Framework Programme of Research and Technological Development, BiophotonicPlus.