A long established firm committed to the development and design of highly sensitive biomedical instrumentation for research, clinical and industrial applications, ISS innovations introduced to research-grade fluorescence instrumentation generated a second product line for medical applications. In 1992, ISS started a project with the research group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign aimed at understanding the behavior of fluorophores in scattering and turbid media; the goal was the development of an instrument suitable for the non-invasive measurements of metabolites in the human body. As a result of this collaboration, ISS introduced a non-invasive Tissue Oximeter for the measurement of the absolute oxygen concentration in tissues, called OxiplexTS. The first prototype of the instrument was completed in 1998; with units of OxiplexTS having been installed worldwide. A second instrument, Imagent - utilized for the mapping of activated brain areas - was added in 2001. Both products have been developed with NIH SBIR support and are today they successfully marketed worldwide by ISS Medical. Instruments developed by the firm are installed worldwide with Customers including several major universities, corporations, hospitals and research institutions in the US and elsewhere Mayo Foundation, VA Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Institutes of Health, Oak Ridge National Laboratories and The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
