The European Patent Office (EPO) recently awarded its 2017 European Inventor of the Year Award to Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor James G. Fujimoto, whose winning medical imaging patent was secured by Foley Hoag LLP partner Alexander Akhiezer.

Collaborating directly with the inventors, Akhiezer obtained the European patent cited by the EPO in its Award announcement. The patent relates to the application of a type of lasers known as Fourier Domain Mode Locking (FDML) lasers in the field of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT).

"It was a pleasure and an honor to have worked with Professor Fujimoto at the forefront of medical imaging technology and to be a part of the OCT story," Akhiezer said. "This annual award is one of Europe’s most prestigious innovation prizes that distinguishes inventors whose pioneering inventions provide answers to some of the biggest challenges of our times."

Fujimoto is known for his groundbreaking research that resulted in the development of OCT, a medical imaging technique that is now a standard of care for diagnosis and treatment ophthalmological diseases. He is a principal investigator in the Biomedical Optical Imaging and Biophotonics Group within the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department.

Fujimoto shares the award with two other scientists who work in the field of OCT.

Launched by the EPO in 2006, the European Inventor of the Year Award pays tribute to the creativity of inventors worldwide who use their technical, scientific and intellectual skills to make a real contribution to technological progress and economic growth.