Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Commerce SBIR Phase I: To address the NIST need for an instrument to detect aerosolized-droplet dose delivery of

Description

To address the NIST need for an instrument to detect aerosolized-droplet dose delivery of vaccines, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Aerosolized Vaccine Dose Analysis (AVIDA) system based on the combination of planar laser-induced fluorescence, laser diffraction, microscope optics, and an advanced image processing algorithm. This system, using temporal image splitting, provides clearly focused fluorescence and scattering images of aerosolized droplets/particles. The innovation in the system architecture enables high-speed acquisition of both fluorescence and scattering images at <10 microsec per image. The advanced algorithm can process images to extract and identify droplet/particle size and concentration of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) within each droplet. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of this system by designing, assembling, and testing an experimental prototype using microspheres and aerosolized API-laden solutions. In Phase II, POC plans to optimize the system design, improving performance, in terms of image acquisition rate, image resolution, response time, image processing capability of the algorithm, and user interface. At the conclusion of Phase II, we anticipate delivering a fully functioning prototype applicable to a wide range of healthcare technologies, and identifying the most promising commercial and government applications for the commercialization of the AVIDA system.