US Patent Issued to The General Hospital on July 1 for "Miniaturized intravascular fluorescence-ultrasound imaging catheter" (German, American Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,343,199, issued on July 1, was assigned to The General Hospital Corp. (Boston).

"Miniaturized intravascular fluorescence-ultrasound imaging catheter" was invented by Stephan Kellnberger (Norwood, Mass.), Vasilis Ntziachristos (Graefelfing, Germany), Dmitry Bozhko (Munich) and Farouc Jaffer (Jamaica Plain, Mass.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A hybrid NIRF/IVUS imaging probe containing i) a spatially-truncated optical lens a substantially-planar surface of which is inclined with respect to an axis to reflect light, transmitted between proximal and distal ends of the probe, internally into a body of the lens, and ii) an acoustic transducer ...