Touching a nerve

A new method to guide and control microsurgical tools using optical coherence tomography (OCT) is being developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the US Food and Drug Administration Center for Devices and Radiological Health. In their recent work, which appears in this issue of Electronics Letters, the team have demonstrated a fibre nerve stimulation probe integrated with an OCT distance sensor which can be controlled much more precisely; therefore significantly improving the safety of the technique.