Takayuki Akahoshi, M.D., has been the Director of Ophthalmology at the Mitsui Memorial Hospital in Tokyo, Japan, for 20 years. One of the most innovative surgeons, he is best known internationally for developing the Phaco Prechop technique and instrumentation that divides the lens nucleus prior to phacoemulsification, eliminating the process of nuclear grooving. This technique greatly reduces ultrasound time, making the process easier, safer and faster. His average surgical time is less than 4 minutes and the fastest surgery has been 1 minute and 29 seconds! He has devoted the majority of his professional career to the refinement of cataract surgery and has the largest surgical volume among ophthalmologists in Japan attending about 200 cases a week.

He is driven by the fact that cataract is still the number one cause of blindness in the world even though it is curable. People become blind because they cannot be treated. Hence, he believes it is necessary to teach doctors who can treat millions of patients and contain the disease. He says he likes to teach a doctor on the condition that the doctor in training, in turn, will teach another doctor. Widely travelled, Dr. Akahoshi has visited over 65 countries to give lectures and demonstrate live surgeries for which he is well known not only in Europe and Asia but North America as well. In 1994, he won the first prize in the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) Film Festival.

In 2004, he was awarded the Grand Prix Prize both at ASCRS and ESCRS for the epoch making Knuckle Tip. The same year, he developed a special small sleeve which realised the sub-2mm coaxial phaco surgery that eliminated the conventional bimanual MICS. He also developed new injectors and technique to implant a 6-mm AcrySof through a sub-2mm incision. In 2008 he developed a unique Wobble Tip, which has an off-centred aspiration port to the main shaft to create wobbling movement of the tip on the OZil. Several new I/A tips for the micro-coaxial surgery have made the cataract surgery much more efficient and safer procedure.