[Federal Register Volume 71, Number 156 (Monday, August 14, 2006)]
[Notices]
[Pages 46489-46490]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 06-6873]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

National Institutes of Health


Government-Owned Inventions; Availability for Licensing

AGENCY: National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, HHS.

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: The inventions listed below are owned by an agency of the U.S. 
Government and are available for licensing in the U.S. in accordance 
with 35 U.S.C. 207 to achieve expeditious commercialization of results 
of federally-funded research and development. Foreign patent 
applications are filed on selected inventions to extend market coverage 
for companies and may also be available for licensing.

ADDRESSES: Licensing information and copies of the U.S. patent 
applications listed below may be obtained by writing to the indicated 
licensing contact at the Office of Technology Transfer, National 
Institutes of Health, 6011 Executive Boulevard, Suite 325, Rockville, 
Maryland 20852-3804; telephone: 301/496-7057; fax: 301/402-0220. A 
signed Confidential Disclosure Agreement will be required to receive 
copies of the patent applications.

Hollow Waveguide Laser Delivery System for Digital Particle Image 
Velocity

Description of Technology

    Available for licensing and commercial development is an all-
hollow-waveguide laser delivery system used for effective digital 
particle image velocimetry (DPIV) illumination. The System incorporates 
two key optical hollow waveguide components: An uncoated funnel-shaped 
hollow glass taper for a direct laser-to-taper coupling and a flexible 
hollow core waveguide for precise high-peak-power laser delivery. The 
principle of operation of the uncoated hollow taper is based on 
grazing-incidence effect. The optical taper is used for direct lens-
free launching of laser radiation including from powerful lasers into 
fibers and waveguides. Because of the mutual action of the direct 
parallel laser excitation, the mode coupling process and mode filtering 
effect, the hollow taper serves as a mode converter that transforms the 
highly multimode profile of the input laser emission into a high-
quality Gaussian-shaped profile at the taper output. Moreover, because 
of the lower power density of the output laser beam and its high 
causality profile, the

[[Page 46490]]

taper ensures higher damage threshold for the delivery waveguide in 
comparison to the conventional lens laser-to-fiber coupling. To improve 
the high-peak-power delivery capability of the proposed allow-hollow-
waveguide DPIV illumination system, instead of a conventional solid-
core fiber link, we have used a cyclic olefin polymer (COP)-coated 
hollow glass waveguide which is designed to minimize the waveguide 
attenuation losses at a typical DPIV laser wavelength of 532-nm. This 
waveguide provides a significantly higher laser power delivery 
capability and higher damage threshold. The all-hollow-waveguide DPIV 
laser delivery system offers essential advanced features over 
conventional bulk-optics-based delivery techniques in terms of 
formatting thin (0.5-1.0 mm), wide (10 mm or wider) and uniform laser 
illumination sheet; high-peak-power laser delivery without damaging 
effects (> 1 GW/cm2), flexibility, miniaturization, simplified 
alignment, immunity to external influence (including vibrations and 
angular laser beam drift), and safe and confined laser delivery.

Applications

    2. Optics; Particle imaging: Velocimetry.

Market

    4. Illumination, high peak laser powered delivery.

Inventors

    6. Ilko K. Ilev, Ronald A. Robinson, Ronald W. Waynant (FDA).

Publications

    1. IK Ilev et al., ``Grazing-Incidence-Based Hollow Taper for 
Infrared Laser-to-Fiber Coupling,'' Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 74, 
1999, pp. 2921-2923.
    2. IK Ilev et al., ``Uncoated Hollow Taper as a Single Optical 
Funnel for Laser Delivery,'' Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 70, 
1999, pp. 3840-3843.
    3. IK Ilev et al., ``Ultraviolet Laser Delivery Using an Uncoated 
Hollow Taper,'' IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 36, 2000, pp. 
944-948.
    4. IK Ilev et al., ``Attenuation Measurement of Infrared Optical 
Fibers Using a Hollow-Taper-Based Coupling Method,'' Applied Optics, 
Vol. 39, 2000, pp. 3192-3196.
    5. RA Robinson et al., ``Design and Optimization of a Flexible 
High-Peak Power Laser-to-Fiber Coupled Illumination System Used in 
Digital Particle Image Velocimetry'', Review of Scientific Instruments, 
Vol. 75, 2004, pp. 4856-4862.

Patent Status

    8. U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/730,866 filed 28 Oct 2005 
(HHS Reference No. AE-015-2006/0-US-01).

Licensing Status

    10. Available for non-exclusive or exclusive licensing.

Licensing Contact

    Michael A. Shmilovich, Esq.; 301/435-5019. [email protected]. 
[email protected].>

Collaborative Research Opportunity

    The Food and Drug Administration's Center for Devices and 
Radiological Health is seeking statements of capability or interest 
from parties interested in collaborative research to further develop, 
evaluate, or commercialize this technology. Please contact the 
inventors at 301/827-4685 for more information.

    Dated: July 28, 2006.
Steven M. Ferguson,
Director, Division of Technology Development and Transfer; Office of 
Technology Transfer, National Institutes of Health.
[FR Doc. 06-6873 Filed 8-11-06; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4140-01-M