# Ocular Therapeutic Delivery Through Real-time Endoscopic B-scan OCT-guided Tools and Robotic Assistance

> **NIH NIH R01** · VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER · 2020 · $393,750

## Abstract

Project Summary
Therapeutic protocols using gene therapy or stem cells for treating ocular diseases are still in their infancy, but
promise a paradigm shift in treating a variety of visual disorders. Functional cellular preservation is expected to
reduce progression of vision impairment, thereby reducing suffering and economic burden. With an aging world
population, developing efficient and cost-effective therapies for age-related ocular diseases have become
critical. Although less common, inherited retinal disorders cause untreatable vision loss in the young with only
supportive care available. New molecular therapeutic agents for these and other blinding diseases present a
potential for sight preservation. However, robust translatable injection techniques to enable pre-clinical
researchers and clinicians to visualize and accurately deliver therapies to the favored subretinal location are
lacking. A safe and accurate subretinal injection procedure is hampered by lack of simultaneous real-time
visualization of the cross-sectional retinal layers and the needle tip. Moreover, subretinal injections require
extreme accuracy and steadiness beyond the physiological tremor of most surgeons. Due to these perception
and technical challenges, the current injection technique may disrupt adjacent anatomical structures. In
addition, agent or cells may be injected into the incorrect layer or reflux through the internal retinal hole into the
vitreous cavity. Such complications may negatively affect potential vision preservation. The reliability and
safety of delivering ocular therapeutics are ongoing FDA concerns, which may affect advancement of the
dramatically increasing treatments with >80 Investigational New Drug applications in 2015. Our goal is to
directly address the FDA concerns by offering solutions to the critical accuracy barriers of perception and
maneuverability by using a novel concept of a direct approach for subretinal injections using needles equipped
with B-scan optical coherence tomography (OCT)-guided visualization and by using robotic assistance with
online segmentation for localized therapeutic delivery. Our main hypothesis is that the proposed approach
with technological augmentation of surgeons’ visualization and manipulation skills for subretinal injections will
enable a less invasive, more accurate, and safer therapeutic delivery procedure for ocular diseases. Aim I of
our research includes the merging of novel B-scan OCT-guided needles with robotic assistance to achieve
therapeutic delivery with minimal anatomical disruption. Aim II of our research includes testing our hypothesis
by translating our systems to a preclinical porcine model to evaluate the role of visualization and maneuver
augmentation in improving accuracy and time efficiency. This proposed work will develop efficacious OCT
image-guided robotic-assisted surgical technologies and methods to enable the accurate delivery, of
biologicals being discovered for future preventi...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10000101
- **Project number:** 5R01EY028133-03
- **Recipient organization:** VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** KAREN MARGARET JOOS
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $393,750
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-01 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10000101

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10000101, Ocular Therapeutic Delivery Through Real-time Endoscopic B-scan OCT-guided Tools and Robotic Assistance (5R01EY028133-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10000101. Licensed CC0.

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