(Vienna, 17 November 2017) Christoph Hitzenberger, Deputy Head of the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at MedUni Vienna, has been awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st Class by Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen. The physicist played a significant role in the development of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), an examination procedure predominantly used in medical imaging.
Christoph Hitzenberger developed the first heterodyne LCI system for measuring intraocular distances (axial eye length, retinal thickness). Together with Adolf Fercher, he developed the spectral domain LCI technique (1995), which, due to its high degree of measuring sensitivity, forms the basis for modern clinical OCT ophthalmic examination devices. For this, Christoph Hitzenberger and Adolf Fercher were awarded this year's prestigious Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize. This award, conferred by the United States National Academy of Engineering (NAE), is also known as the "Nobel Prize for Engineering Sciences".
About Christoph Hitzenberger
Christoph Hitzenberger is a physics graduate (University of Vienna). He gained his postdoctoral qualification in Medical Physics and, since 1997, has been researching and teaching as an Associate Professor at MedUni Vienna's Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering (formerly Institute of Medical Physics of the University of Vienna). He has been Deputy Head of the Center since 2011. He has coordinated the "Medical Physics" PhD programme at MedUni Vienna since 2006. The main focuses of Hitzenberger's research are biomedical optics, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and ophthalmologic imaging.