Key Investor Signals
Second clinical study underway at a leading Toronto research hospital
Oculum's second clinical study is underway at Sunnybrook, a University of Toronto-affiliated academic health sciences centre with major research activity in medical imaging and image-guided therapeutics.
Awarded a $25,000 non-dilutive Tech@RBC Momentum Grant
University of Toronto's Health Innovation Hub awarded Oculum a $25,000 Tech@RBC Momentum Grant. The grant is non-dilutive and includes RBCx mentorship and entrepreneurship-network access.
Selected for UTEST research-startup program
UTEST includes Oculum in its portfolio of University of Toronto research-based startups and provides selected companies with investment capital, mentoring, strategy and incubation.
Other Positive Signals
- VentureLift funding supports software validation and development of Oculum's first functional prototype.
- Supported by U of T’s Health Innovation Hub, with mentorship and commercialization support.
Team
Olga Klushina
Founder
- Selected as a Sunnybrook Medventions Innovation Fellow, working directly with clinicians on unmet surgical needs before founding Oculum.
- Worked in test engineering at an X-ray imaging startup, giving her directly relevant medical-imaging hardware experience.
- Served as Systems Engineering Lead at KPM Power, adding hands-on systems engineering and hardware-development experience.
- Won York University's 2021 Bergeron Medal for outstanding entrepreneurial achievement as the top graduating BEST student.
Product
Oculum is building a modular imaging system that attaches to surgical microscopes already used in eye operating rooms. It applies AI to the live microscope image to highlight transparent retinal tissue on screen, aiming to replace the separate dye-staining step used before membrane peeling.
Removes the need for surgical staining dyes
The system creates tissue contrast computationally from the live microscope image, replacing the chemical dye used to make transparent retinal tissue visible during membrane peeling.
Designed to fit existing surgical microscopes.
Oculum is building the system as an add-on to surgical microscopes already installed in operating rooms, reducing the need for hospitals to replace a major capital asset.
Adds real-time guidance to existing workflow
The software highlights tissue from the live microscope feed during surgery, keeping visual guidance inside the existing microscope view rather than relying on a separate pre-operative image.
Market Overview
Oculum targets vitreoretinal surgery, where hospitals and retinal surgery centres already purchase microscopes, disposable instruments and staining agents used during membrane-peeling procedures. The opportunity is to replace an existing paid visualisation step inside an established surgical workflow rather than create a new procedure category.
Demand is supported by high procedure volumes and widespread use of membrane-peeling techniques among retina specialists. More than one million procedures have already used retinal staining dyes, showing established demand for tools that improve tissue visualisation during surgery.
More than 225,000 vitrectomy procedures are performed each year in the United States for conditions including epiretinal membrane.
TissueBlue / ILM Blue has been used for internal limiting membrane staining in more than one million procedures worldwide.
SkyQuest estimates the market at $2.44B in 2024 and $4.07B by 2033, a 5.84% CAGR.
Vitreoretinal service volume in Medicare grew from about 527,000 in 2000 to 3.76 million in 2021.
Comparable Outcomes
Dutch Ophthalmic Research Center
DORC supplies equipment, instruments, disposables and liquids for ophthalmic surgery, with a strong position in vitreoretinal procedures and retina-surgery workflows. Carl Zeiss Meditec acquired DORC in April 2024 for approximately €985 million.
Novadaq Technologies
Novadaq developed fluorescence-imaging technology that gave surgeons real-time visualisation of blood flow and tissue perfusion during procedures. Stryker acquired Novadaq for US$701 million in September 2017, expanding its surgical imaging portfolio.
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Sources
This profile was built from public company materials, ecosystem sources, market references, and professional profiles.