IRIDEX Brand Guidelines: Mountain View’s 1989 Eye-Laser Maker & Its MicroPulse Idea

A Mountain View laser company.

IRIDEX is an ophthalmic laser company based in Mountain View, California. The company says it was founded in 1989. A company profile published by the market-data site Stock Analysis gives the business’s earlier name as IRIS Medical Instruments, records that it became IRIDEX Corporation in November 1995, and dates its stock-market listing to February 1996. Its shares still trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol IRIX.

The company describes its business as developing, manufacturing and marketing laser-based medical systems, delivery devices and consumable instruments for ophthalmology. It says it sells in the United States through its own sales force, and abroad through a mix of direct sales and about 60 independent distributors, reaching more than 100 countries.

The name itself has two forms. Older announcements, such as a 2012 release on PR Newswire, set it in capitals as IRIDEX, the form also used in the company’s Nasdaq name; the current website mostly writes it as Iridex in running text.

MicroPulse and two families of lasers.

IRIDEX’s products fall into two main families, glaucoma and retina. For glaucoma, its website lists the Cyclo G6 laser system, used with the MicroPulse P3 delivery device and the G-Probe. For the retina, it lists the IQ 532 and IQ 577 lasers, the OcuLight range and the TxCell scanning delivery system, along with probes for use in surgery. It also keeps smaller lines for ear, nose and throat work and for veterinary practice.

MicroPulse is the technology the company puts at the centre of its brand: a way of delivering laser light as trains of short pulses of controlled width, rather than as a continuous beam. In February 2024 IRIDEX announced the grant of a European patent for a laser system with short-pulse characteristics, and said it is the exclusive provider of MicroPulse devices. In January 2024 it announced, with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London, the first patient enrolment in a UK study and registry of MicroPulse transscleral laser therapy.

The company marked its 35th anniversary in January 2024 by launching the Iridex 532 and Iridex 577 lasers in the United States, presented with touchscreen controls and treatment reports. The lasers were shown at the Hawaiian Eye and Retina 2024 meeting that month, and the company’s website still carries the line “Celebrating 35 Years of Innovation in Eyecare.”

The patent announcement described how the system works in general terms: a diode pump source and a frequency-doubled solid-state laser producing visible light, with pulse trains whose power is kept steady by a feedback control system. It said the patent covers wavelengths from 520 to 615 nanometres, a span that includes the 532 and 577 nanometre wavelengths in the names of the new lasers. The UK study, titled “MicroPulse Transscleral Laser Therapy: A Prospective UK Study,” began in the trust’s Western Eye glaucoma department, the first unit to use the treatment within the registry; IRIDEX said it would fund essential parts of the three-year study and supply a database for it.

Design and documentation.

Ophthalmic device makers sell to a narrow, expert audience: ophthalmologists, optometrists, opticians and hospital buyers. Their brochures and websites tend to follow a shared visual grammar. The instrument itself is usually the hero, photographed on a plain white or pale grey ground so that every knob, lens and joystick reads clearly, with the maker’s name small on the housing.

A second register places the same equipment in use. Slit lamps, fundus cameras and refraction units appear in clinic rooms, with a practitioner on one side of the chin rest and a patient on the other; surgical microscopes and laser systems are shown in operating theatres, with a surgeon at the console. Screens matter as much as hardware in this category, so many images show scans, maps or software views alongside the machine.

The third register is explanatory. Cross-section diagrams of the eye, showing the cornea, lens and retina, are used to explain what a device measures or treats, and many makers publish training material and webinars for clinicians. Because these are regulated medical products, some product pages note that a model is available only in certain markets.

Much of the category’s public life happens at congresses. Makers launch and demonstrate equipment on exhibition stands at meetings such as the ESCRS congress in Europe and the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, as well as at optical trade fairs, and their news pages often follow that calendar. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it now and where it says its products are made.

Narrowing to the eye.

IRIDEX once worked beyond ophthalmology. On 3 January 2012 it and Cutera, a maker of aesthetic lasers based in Brisbane, California, announced a binding agreement for Cutera to buy the assets of IRIDEX’s global aesthetic business, including the portable VariLite system. IRIDEX’s chief executive said in the joint release, distributed by PR Newswire, that the sale would let the company refocus all its resources on ophthalmology. The two companies said the deal was expected to close early in 2012, with IRIDEX supplying Cutera with products and service support during the handover.

A second deal reshaped its range. In March 2021 IRIDEX announced a strategic collaboration with Topcon, the Tokyo optical company: Topcon bought exclusive rights to distribute IRIDEX lasers, delivery devices and probes in Asia Pacific and key markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and took an equity stake of about 10 per cent, while IRIDEX bought Topcon’s PASCAL laser product line, a pattern-scanning laser platform. IRIDEX described Topcon as a company founded in 1932, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with an eye-care business branded Topcon Healthcare, and said its own products would join Topcon’s range of diagnostic and treatment equipment for glaucoma and retina customers. IRIDEX said the transaction was completed on 10 March 2021. In June 2023 it launched a new-generation PASCAL laser with MicroPulse across the United States, combining the two technologies under its own name.

IRIDEX remains a Nasdaq-listed company headquartered in Mountain View, and Stock Analysis lists Patrick Mercer as its chief executive. Its profile there describes customers ranging from ophthalmologists, teaching hospitals and surgical centres to veterinary practices, and lists the EndoProbe family of instruments for use inside the eye during surgery.

For a design guide, IRIDEX shows a technical brand built around one named technology. Compare Topcon, its partner in the 2021 deal, and Quantel Medical, a French maker of ophthalmic lasers and ultrasound. For this guide we use a deep navy and a coral with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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