Pioneering advances in laser eye surgery

Professor Reinstein's United States Patent for the Artemis VHFU Scanner, the world's most accurate corneal scanner.

The London Vision Clinic’s founder and Medical Director, Professor Dan Reinstein, is one of the medical experts who have significantly refined and advanced the technology and techniques of LASIK surgery and other eye laser treatments.

The first breakthrough

It was while at Cornell that Prof Reinstein made his first major breakthrough, when he found that ultrasound could be used to scan the surface of the cornea with extraordinary accuracy. Using a frequency 30x that used for foetal ultrasound, he mapped individual layers of corneal tissue, at an accuracy of one micron – 1/1000mm.

Convinced that this was a very significant discovery, the young Professor Dan Reinstein was determined to make it his career. His confidence was rewarded when Stephen Trokel, the co-inventor of the Excimer laser, recognised the value of this new scanning technique. Trokel sent Dan human subjects for scanning: people who had developed complications from eye laser treatment in its earliest days.

The prototype scanner, built with his father-in-law’s camera tripod, was to become the world’s most accurate corneal scanner, the Artemis™. Even today, only a handful of eye institutes have access to an Artemis™ scanner. One of them is the London Vision Clinic.

Continually refining

Professor Reinstein’s work on the Artemis™ set the standard for his career, during which he has continued to develop new, more accurate technologies for both eye centres and laser eye treatment and surgery in general. Working with Carl Zeiss Meditec, he has developed the MEL 80 laser, which remains the benchmark for eye laser treatment.

In all, Professor Reinstein holds seven patents for techniques or technologies relating to LASIK surgery.