ISS, Inc.

Since 1984, ISS has been committed to the development and design of highly sensitive scientific instrumentation for research, clinical and industrial applications. Over the years, our 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 headed by Prof. Enrico Gratton and 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; about one hundred units of OxiplexTS have been installed worldwide so far. A second instrument, Imagent, utilized for the mapping of activated brain areas, was added in 2001. Both products have been developed with the generous contribution of The National Institutes of Health through the SBIR program and today they are successfully marketed worldwide by our division ISS Medical, fully dedicated to the development of instrumentation for medical applications.