MedUni Vienna honours Inventors of the Year 2025

Elisabeth Brunner, Michael Pircher (both from the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering) and Andreas Pollreisz (Department of Ophthalmology) developed a novel imaging technique for the human retina that, for the first time, enables previously non-visualisable microstructures and cells to be made visible using modified adaptive optics-assisted optical coherence tomography (AO-OCT). The retina is part of the central nervous system and contains cellular and microstructural features that can display disease processes occurring elsewhere in the body—not just in the eye. In vivo visualisation of these microstructures is extremely challenging because the retina is almost transparent and many of these tiny structures have too little contrast to be imaged using existing techniques.

For the first time, the new technology makes it possible to visualise neural, inflammatory and vascular cellular structures of the retina in humans non-invasively, painlessly and with an acquisition time of under 2 seconds – with a level of detail previously achievable only through highly complex laboratory analyses of tissue biopsies. By integrating high-resolution retinal imaging with AI-driven automated analysis, the technology could unlock new insights across a broad spectrum of neurological, ophthalmological, renal, and cardiovascular diseases. This has the potential to significantly enhance and accelerate research and development processes of these pathologies across medicine and the pharmaceutical industry.

With the aim of rapidly bringing the new technology into practical application, the inventors – supported by AWS PreSeed funding and technology transfer from MedUni Vienna – founded a spin-off, Thyra Imaging, within a very short period of time.