Boston Micromachines Corp. (BMC) has received a $1.2 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to fabricate a retinal imaging system using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based deformable mirrors for wavefront correction. The instrument, a next-generation adaptive optics scanning ophthalmoscope (AOSLO), was developed in collaboration with the Indiana University School of Optometry under a Phase II Competing Renewal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from NIH’s National Eye Institute. The device will be used as a quantitative tool to study eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration. As part of the program, BMC will install and support the device at the Joslin Diabetes Center’s Beetham Eye Institute (BEI) in Boston for an observational pilot study. “One of our goals in the study is to examine AOSLO images taken from eyes of patients with and without diabetes and across a wide range of diabetic eye complication severity,” said BEI ophthalmologist Dr. Jennifer K. Sun. “This will allow us to characterize neural any vascular cellular changes in the diabetic retina and may give us new understanding of how diabetic eye complications develop and should be treated.” For more information, visit: www.bostonmicromachines.com