We are delighted to introduce you to Dr. Kazuhiro Kurokawa, who recently has joined the Devers Discoveries in Sight group as an Assistant Scientist. As you will see from the introduction below, Kazuhiro comes to us with a very impressive background and will be a wonderful addition to this already terrific group. We look forward to his contributions to the group and to the field. 

Kazuhiro has over 10 years’ experience as an optical engineer, especially for ophthalmic imaging technologies: optical coherence tomography (OCT) and adaptive optics (AO). His research primarily focuses on improving the capability of such imaging systems to visualize and quantify cells and their physiological processes in the living human eye. This work involves various research areas, including optical engineering, ophthalmic technology, biomedical optics, vision science, and clinical research, which helped develop his unique and specialized skills. He has made scientific and technical contributions to these fields through publications and presentations. Kazuhiro is the recipient of the 2009 and 2018 Pascal Rol Award, which recognizes the importance and impact of research presented at our leading international conference on biomedical optics, hosted by SPIE, the International Society for Optics and Photonics. He is also listed as a co-inventor of two patents, each held by the University of Tsukuba and Indiana University.

Kazuhiro’s goals are to improve imaging capability of the eye to improve clinical outcomes by establishing a new optical imaging lab at Legacy-Devers Eye Institute. First, he will focus on building multi-contrast AO-OCT for humans, one of the most powerful research-grade imaging systems to visualize fine cellular details at any depth in the retina and detect cellular dynamics. The image quality and amount of information provided by this state-of-art AO-OCT far exceeds current clinical instruments. To further innovate, he will add additional functionalities to AO-OCT (e.g., polarization, blood flow, cellular dynamics, and biomechanics). Multi-functionalities will greatly expand research capability to allow for the study and measure various metrics, such as cellular and subcellular dynamics, capillary blood flow, cellular and subcellular biomechanics, and polarization contrast at the cellular level, which has not previously been possible.

Kazuhiro will contribute much to the Devers’ research and clinical teams to better define disease onset and retinal health. Whenever he is not working, Kazuhiro enjoys hiking, reading, and spending time with his family.