A device developed by a Madison company to help surgeons better see tissue during operations has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
OnLume’s fluorescence guided surgery system, approved Jan. 31, features a customized camera at the end of a long, articulating arm. It is used with FDA-approved indocyanine green dye to display fluorescent images on a monitor.
“It helps color code the tissue in the operating room so the surgeon can differentiate what looks normal from what doesn’t look normal,” said Christie Lin, a senior scientist at the company.
Surgeons at UW Hospital are expected to be among the first to use the device, within the next two months, before a nationwide launch later this year, said Adam Uselmann, CEO.
The company, at 3300 Commercial Avenue on Madison’s East Side, started in 2015. It has five full-time employees, including Uselmann and Lin. The technology is based on research at UW-Madison’s Morgridge Institute for Research.