David Huang
David Huang, James Fujimoto and Eric Swanson invented a revolutionary method for imaging the internal structures of body tissue with unprecedented detail called optical coherence tomography (OCT). OCT has significantly advanced ophthalmology, where it is especially useful for examining retinal tissue. It also is being applied in cardiology and across a variety of fields.
Huang was born in Chiayi, Taiwan, in 1964. His father, a physician, and his mother, a teacher, moved the family to the U.S. when Huang was 12. In an interview with the National Inventors Hall of Fame®, he said his father always thought of the U.S. as a land of opportunity. “It's an immigrant story – the United States as a land of opportunities and innovation that attracts talents from all of the world.” As he adjusted to life in the U.S., Huang excelled academically and was particularly adept in math and science.
Huang enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1985 and his master’s degree in 1989, both in electrical engineering and computer science. He then earned a doctorate in medical engineering and medical physics from MIT and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School, both in 1993.
It was at MIT that Huang began to work with Fujimoto, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Swanson, associate group leader at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. In Fujimoto’s lab, the trio worked to develop a new imaging technology based on interferometry with short coherence-length light. In 1990, Huang, Fujimoto and Swanson built the first OCT machine, which could reveal structures beneath the surface of retinal and other tissue.
Patented in 1994, OCT does not require contact with the tissue being imaged, making it ideal for many applications. In eye exams, for instance, OCT measures the time delay of light reflected from eye structures, allowing clinicians to assess the anatomy of the eye with micrometer resolution. In several seconds, as the patient fixes their gaze on a target, a beam of light scans across the eye and creates a highly detailed 3D image. Because OCT most often uses invisible infrared light, the patient is not dazzled by bright light as they would be with ordinary fundus photography.
“We knew OCT was going to be very useful in ophthalmology because of its ease of use, high resolution and three-dimensional nature,” Huang said. But he explained the adoption of OCT might have taken longer if not for the development of the anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) around 2000. “It was being developed for neovascular age-related macular degeneration and turned out to be a blockbuster treatment that very effectively saves vision in patients suffering from this leading cause of blindness. OCT imaging was needed to provide the predictive biomarkers for identifying patients who would benefit from anti-VEGF treatment and the outcome measures to assess the treatment effectiveness. OCT is now used by clinicians to decide when and how often patients need anti-VEGF injections. That synergy between OCT and anti-VEGF treatment made both discoveries develop more rapidly and work more effectively for patients.”
Looking back on the development of OCT – to which he began contributing while pursuing his doctoral thesis – Huang said, “You can make significant contributions at the early stages of your career. Jim was an early-career faculty member, I was still a student and Eric was also pretty young at that time. We were all relatively early in our careers, and we were able to start a new area of research and technology.”
Huang has since received many awards in recognition of his work on OCT, including the 2017 Russ Prize, the 2022 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and the 2023 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, each of which he shared with Fujimoto and Swanson.
Currently, Huang serves as director of research and associate director of the Casey Eye Institute and director of the Center for Ophthalmic Optics & Lasers (COOL Lab) at Oregon Health & Science University. He is also president emeritus of the International Ocular Circulation Society and co-founder and board member of GoCheck Kids. Founded in 2011, GoCheck Kids is a Food and Drug Administration-registered smartphone-based app that screens preschool-aged children for risk factors of amblyopia, or lazy eye – the leading cause of monocular visual impairment in U.S. children and a leading cause of childhood vision impairment worldwide. GoCheck Kids serves more than 6,500 pediatric clinics in the U.S. and Europe. “I'm very proud of it,” said Huang. “We've screened more than 6 million children with this technology.”
Discussing his work and looking toward the future, Huang said, “Because of my early experience with OCT, I’ve become an opportunity seeker at the intersection of disciplines. I tend to look for areas that are relatively unexplored because people are unaware of opportunities on the clinical or the technical side, which I have a unique perspective on because I keep up with both areas. There’s certainly no lack of ideas.”