14 Jan 2025
Santa Barbara firm developed high-speed, tunable emitters used in swept-source OCT applications.
Praevium Research, the California-based manufacturer of advanced vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), has become part of Thorlabs after several years of close collaboration.
Founded by UC Santa Barbara researcher Vijay Jayaraman back in 2001, Praevium is known for its development of high-speed tunable VCSELs with MEMS integration.
Advantages of the designs include faster imaging speeds and improved imaging depth when used for swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT).
MEMS-VCSEL expertise
Thorlabs has been working with Praevium since 2008, when the latter became a member of Thorlabs’ “strategic partner program”. Announcing the acquisition, Thorlabs said:
“Over the past 17 years, Praevium has partnered with Thorlabs on the development and commercialization of several novel technologies, including the MEMS-VCSEL swept-wavelength laser sources, swept-source OCT systems at 1060 nm and 1300 nm, and broadband SLD [superluminescent diode] light sources for OCT applications.”
Company president Jennifer Cable added: “Praevium’s expertise and innovation in high-speed tunable MEMS-VCSEL laser design and fabrication has been instrumental to our success in bringing innovative lasers to the OCT medical device market and enabling our own OCT product lines. I look forward to using our combined expertise to accelerate product development and commercialization.”
During the BiOS “Hot Topics” session at SPIE’s Photonics West event in 2013, Thorlabs detailed a groundbreaking project involving Praevium and OCT researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where a tunable VCSEL used an electrostatic MEMS actuator to control the laser cavity length, in a monolithic design for OCT applications.
As well as being much faster than alternative approaches, the design produced a long coherence length, meaning that it could be used to image an entire eye, rather than just a shallow slice of tissue near to its surface. The technique has since been extended to deliver volumetric imaging on the meter scale.
Photonics West involvement
Commenting on the Thorlabs deal Jayaraman said: “Thorlabs has been a fantastic partner for nearly two decades, and we have been honored to work with them to develop advanced laser technology that is improving the quality of human life across the globe.
“We are excited to join this world-class organization and multiply the impact of MEMS-VCSELs and other emerging photonics technologies across a broad variety of biomedical, sensor, and other applications.”
Praevium is set to maintain its individual branding and current leadership under the Thorlabs umbrella, with Jayaraman as senior scientist and Christopher Burgner as general manager.
It will maintain its focus on the development of novel semiconductor lasers and detectors, in partnership with the Thorlabs team in Jessup, Maryland.
• Jayaraman is scheduled to present some of the firm’s most recent developments at this year’s SPIE Photonics West event, which takes place from January 25th.
His talk on January 29 will detail how frequency-doubled MEMS-VCSEL components engineered to operate at green wavelengths can be used in visible-range OCT for retinal oximetry applications.
Meanwhile Jenn Cable is set to take part in a CEO round-table discussion during SPIE’s Global Business Forum, which runs alongside Photonics West on January 27.
Cable will join MKS Instruments’ John Lee, Singular Photonics' Shahida Imani, Everix's Hooman Banaei, and DRS Daylight Solutions' Tim Day to discuss current challenges and future visions with Edmund Optics' CEO Marisa Edmund.
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