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Russ College of Engineering and Technology
Stocker Center
Athens, OH 45701

Christoph K. Hitzenberger Biography

Christoph K. Hitzenberger

Christoph K. Hitzenberger is vice-chair of the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at the Medical University of Vienna. He joined the Institute of Medical Physics at the University of Vienna in 1987 as an assistant professor and, with the new head of the department Adolf F. Fercher, founded the biomedical optics research group.

During their pioneering work on low-coherence intraocular ranging, Hitzenberger developed the first heterodyne low-coherence interferometry (LCI) system for measuring intraocular distances (axial eye length, retinal thickness), presented in 1990. This work led to the development of the first commercial LCI ocular biometry system that is now standard technology in eye clinics worldwide and has been successfully used for intraocular lens adaptation in millions of cataract patients. The technology was expanded to record optical coherence tomography (OCT) images, yielding one of the first in vivo retinal OCT images of the human eye.

In 1995, Hitzenberger demonstrated, in cooperation with Fercher, the first application of spectral domain (SD) LCI to intraocular ranging. The huge sensitivity advantage of SD LCI/OCT over the earlier time domain technology led to a paradigm shift in OCT technology and enabled rapid 3D imaging. SD OCT has revolutionized retinal diagnostics and is now the industry standard for retinal OCT, with tens of thousands of SD OCT retinal scanners in use worldwide.

Hitzenberger received the award of the Hoechst Foundation for Advancement of Medical Research in Austria and is a fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) and the Optical Society (OSA). In addition to serving as editor-in-chief of the OSA journal Biomedical Optics Express, he is the author or co-author of 150 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, with a total of nearly 20,000 citations.

He studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna and received his Ph.D. in 1983. He earned his habilitation in medical physics 1993.