The University of Edinburgh intends to award a contract for the purchase of a multimodal imaging platform to Heidelberg Engineering as their Spectralis platform meets all the essential technical requirements and maintains compatibility with existing longitudinal research data collected over 15 years.

The Heidelberg Spectralis platform is required to maintain compatibility with over 15 years of existing longitudinal research data. It is the only solution that meets the essential technical requirements for integrated SD-OCT, OCTA and SLO imaging, high-resolution retinal and choroidal imaging, and validated eye-tracking and scan registration capabilities. Use of an alternative platform would compromise comparability with historical datasets, create significant risks to the integrity and continuity of ongoing research, and require extensive re-validation of established imaging and analysis protocols. For these technical and interoperability reasons, the University of Edinburgh intends to award this contract to Heidelberg Engineering.