About
About
The introduction of the laser as a therapeutic surgical tool (https://californiaconsultants.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CNSV-1810-Black.pdf) in the 1960s had a profound effect on certain fields of medicine, particularly for eye surgery (ophthalmology) and minimally invasive surgical disciplines such as the use of laser lithotripsy to break up, e.g., kidney stones in urology. In addition, the use of fiber-optics to view and guide operations on internal organs (laparoscopy and endoscopy) has revolutionized many surgical areas. The implementation of real-time precision diagnostic and surgical guidance has recently started to blossom as many of the advances in electronics, computing and optical telecommunications of the last two decades make their way into the biophotonics field. Several factors have come together to make this happen, including the ability to use fiber-optics with outer diameters as small as 50 microns as conduits for information, the extremely high intrinsic bandwidths and signal-to-noise of optical systems, the insensitivity of fiber-optics to ambient electromagnetic perturbations, and the possibility of using the spectral and coherence properties of laser light to simultaneously yield both functional (molecular level) and structural (tissue organization) information. Surgical tools can now sense temperature and force in real time, and are being equipped with the optical analog of ultrasound to allow the physician to image the tissue they are interacting with, and thereby make a treatment decision in real time, with sub-10-micron precision, all with minimal mechanical and cost impact on the surgical tool.
Triermain, LLC. is a Puget Sound-based company providing professional engineering/consulting services in the areas of image-guided surgery, medical and scientific lasers, biophotonics, optics, fiber-optics, remote sensing, life sciences and metrology. We are experts in building complex opto-electro-mechanical medical devices, optical coherence tomography (OCT), novel laser design and development, and the application of fiber-optic technology to surgical tools to enable precision real-time guidance. We are also experts in transitioning designs from the benchtop to bed-side, and can support your idea from concept to bench testing to pre-clinical work with project management, thorough independent design reviews, transition of the product to short-run manufacturing, identification of novel supply chain options, aid in the development of IP, and introductions to partners for scale-up. Our network includes resources in scalable QMS, project management, surgical work flow analysis, UI mock-ups, software V&V (ISO 62304). We work both virtually and hands-on with companies at all stages, from an idea with 1 – 2 employees, to publicly traded entities and multinationals.
Triermain maintains optical and laser cavity design software capabilities, Solidworks™ CAD capability, other mathematical modeling software, MS Project, and non-linear-optics design aids. We also have access to fiber processing equipment (end-face processing, splicing, termination via a partner) for device fabrication, and fiber substrate material including a wide variety of fiber diameters and coatings, optical / electrical test equipment including oscilloscopes, power meters, and optical T&M equipment. We have a commercial 200 kHz swept-source Optical Coherence Tomography test stand at 1310 nm center wavelength with associated data acquisition, processing and display, and a proprietary in-house OCT source under development with linear-in-k swept operation. We also have a fluorescence image-guided surgery (FIGS) test-stand for near-infrared (NIR) FIGS R&D. We have local and national partners for electrical engineering, software engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial design services (DFM), UI and HID mockups, software V&V (IEC 62304), scale-up to production (on-shore and off-shore), short-run manufacturing facilities, distribution and service.
We are associated with a device incubator in Redwood City, CA (https://www.cannonqualitygroup.com/), through which we have access to laboratory benches and workstations, office areas with standard office supplies, printer, kitchen, bathrooms, conference room, utilities, a machine shop including a 3D printer (Stratasys uPrint SE Plus), small machine tools, BlueM laboratory oven, compressor for air-powered tools, solvent storage cabinet, ultrasonic bath cleaners, pouch sealer (Accu-Seal). Benches are available for rental through Cannon Quality Group. The facility has an Instron test stand available to assess device construction quality and safety, microscopes (binocular and USB handheld), fume hood and filtered air hood. There is also a CER (Controlled Environment Room) inside the facility where devices can be assembled to human use standards.
Bio
Bio
John Black founded Triermain in 2011. (https://californiaconsultants.org/members/john-black/) He has over 25 years of experience in the medical, scientific/research and industrial segments of the photonics industry and currently consults in laser design and development, optical coherence tomography (OCT), medical device design and development, image-guided surgery and optical remote sensing.
John has a B.Sc. in Chemistry with First Class Honors, and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Nottingham. His Ph.D. work with Professor Ivan Powis centered around the use of Resonance Enhanced Multi-Photon Ionization (REMPI) to study molecular spectroscopy and dynamics, yielding one of the earliest fully-rotationally-resolved spectra of an electronically-excited state of the crucial CH3 radical, simultaneously one of the earliest fully-rotationally-resolved spectra of any polyatomic photofragment. (See Bibliography)
He received an SERC/NATO Research Fellowship to do post-doctoral research in photochemistry with Professor R.N. Zare at Stanford University, studying the photodissociation of cyanogen iodide using sub-Doppler spectroscopy and circularly polarized light to confirm the remarkable observations of Eckart Hasselbrink finding chirality (“handedness”) from the transfer of angular momentum from a photon to a molecule in an achiral proto-system. He was a post-doctoral research fellow at Columbia University, developing a new tunable single-mode laser for molecular spectroscopy and reaction dynamics. (Columbia University Tunable Dye Laser).
At Coherent Medical, he managed the R&D Laser/Tissue Engineering group, and spearheaded the development of flagship surgical, ophthalmic and dermatologic applications of lasers – pioneering a new treatment of cutaneous vascular lesions.(Laser-Tissue Interaction) He then joined Lightwave Electronics (which became JDSU, Inc., now Lumentum), working initially on advanced fiber lasers for RGB projection systems in consumer electronics, (Custom Laser Design) and subsequently on the optical design of the Xcyte™ mode-locked ultraviolet laser (Custom Laser Design) for flow cytometry. During this time John and Jennifer Barton also developed some of the earliest ideas concerning the use of double-clad fibers for simultaneous OCT and LIF in biophotonics.
At FoxHollow Technologies, John led the optical engineering team in the successful development of Nighthawk™, the first-in-man intravascular image-guided plaque excision catheter. (Bibliography – Radvany & Kiesz, 2008). This was the first real-time optical coherence tomography (OCT)-guided intravascular surgical procedure performed in humans, and possibly the earliest OCT-guided human surgical procedure of any kind. After FoxHollow, he led the imaging team at Avinger in the development of OCT-guided catheters for the treatment of chronic total occlusions, a severe end-stage form of peripheral / coronary artery disease that can lead to amputations and bypass surgery. The Ocelot™ OCT-guided CTO crossing catheter is FDA-approved and on the market. (http://www.octnews.org/articles/4125843/avingers-ocelot-system-is-fda-cleared/)
John has several issued patents and more pending applications in the fields of laser development, biophotonics, optical diagnostics and medical devices. He is an IEEE Senior Member, IEEE-CNSV member, past Chair of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, guest lecturer at the Univ. of Arizona Biomedical Engineering department, and a member of OSA, APS, SPIE and Sigma Xi. He has over 30 scientific publications and U.S. / International presentations of research, has reviewed text books for the Springer Series in Optical Sciences, and has been a peer reviewer for several journals including Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, Optics Express, and Optics Communications.
Careers
Careers
From time to time our client companies ask us for referrals for people they want to hire. We’ll post these job descriptions here as we get them.
Misc
Misc
Domain names for sale:
John owns the following domain names from a past project. These are available for sale. Contact us at jblack@triermain.com for more details
