ARVO 2019: Gerhard Zinser Memorial Travel Grant for young researchers

The Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) is one of the leading educational and networking events for clinicians as well as researchers, and thus provides a great opportunity for early career investigators to present their projects to an influential audience.

To support young researchers in the field of ophthalmic imaging, Heidelberg Engineering initiated the Gerhard Zinser Memorial Travel Grant in memory of the company’s late co-founder, Dr. Gerhard Zinser. The award supports researchers under the age of 40 whose research is related to imaging techniques.

First travel grant recipient: Dr. Claus Christian von der Burchard

Heidelberg Engineering is happy to announce the first recipient of the Gerhard Zinser Memorial Travel Grant, Dr. Claus Christian von der Burchard (University Eye Clinic Kiel, Germany), who was selected by the ARVO committee for his abstract “Off-Axis Full-Field Time-Domain OCT allows retinal self-scan in the patients with retinal diseases”. ARVO nominates the travel grant recipients based on a scoring system that highlights abstracts considered to be of high interest to the vision and ophthalmology research community.

Dr. von der Burchard’s abstract is about a compact OCT technique that can be produced at low-cost and provides a potential home-care OCT solution for AMD patients. In their clinical study, the research team from the University of Kiel and the Medical Laser Center Lübeck (both in Germany) measured the success rate of the “Off-Axis Full-Field Time-Domain OCT” solution for patient self-assessment and compared its image quality to standard devices.

This OCT technique might allow daily self-assessment by the patient at his home and bears huge potential to improve treatment regimen and thereby treatment outcome. I’m looking forward to presenting this study at the ARVO Annual Meeting in Vancouver”, says Dr. Claus von der Burchard.

Heidelberg Engineering wishes Dr. von der Burchard all the best with his presentation and his future research that aims to improve patient care. Dr. Claus von der Burchard’s award presentation takes place on Monday, April 29, 8:15 till 8:30 am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre (East Ballroom B).

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