One of the major radiation modalities for treating cancer is hadron radiotherapy, which at present uses protons and carbon ions. This is mainly because hadrons have the unique feature of increasing energy deposition with penetration depth, with maximum energy deposition at the end of the range followed by a sharp decrease (Bragg peak). However, treatment...
Disease biomarkers in blood are important diagnostic indicators and are currently analysed in specialised laboratories by expensive and time-consuming procedures (assay duration spanning several hours). These procedures are unsuitable for rapid detection of biomarkers in point of need settings, as a response to life threatening situations where early detection of blood biomarkers is vital, such...
Hydrocephalus is a relevant neurosurgical pathology, both in children and in the ageing population. It comprises a wide set of ailments associated with alterations of the cerebrospinal fluid hydrodynamics and the bio-mechanical properties of the nervous central system structures. In many cases, these pathologies are characterised by an enlargement of the lateral ventricles of the...
The Low Temperature Communication Link is a component of a more ambitious programme “Smart Diagnostics of Superconducting Magnets”. The initial idea of “Smart Diagnostics” is included in the FuSuMaTech Initiative. It comes from considering a superconducting magnet as an IoT (Internet of Things) device. Even if this is presented as targeting superconducting magnets the solution...
The Internet of Things (IoT) is defined as a network of nodes able to monitor physical and chemical magnitudes and provide relevant information concerning safety of individuals and goods. This involves continuous monitoring to assess that a safety-relevant magnitude has not reached an alarming threshold value. Stable and reliable power sources are key factors to...
Assembly of heterogeneous full-custom integrated circuits in high-reliability components allows to create innovative functions in miniature systems, especially in the field of detection and imaging. Whatever the field of application (space science, synchrotron imaging spectrometers applied to X-ray fluorescence, medical imaging, additive manufacturing monitoring, …), the density of electronics is growing up and embedded systems...
Silicon-based photonic biosensors integrated into a semiconductor chip technology can lead to major advances in point-of-care applications, food diagnostics, and environmental monitoring through the rapid and precise analysis of various substances. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in sensors based on photonic integrated circuits (PIC) because they give rise to cost effective,...
The RaDFOS project has the ambitious goal of developing a dosimeter suitable for the next generation of particle accelerators and fusion reactors. The development of these new energy machine poses the need for new dosimetry technologies capable to measure the unprecedented level of dose expected from their operation, quantified above the MGy level. The RaDFOS...
Head and neck cancers represent the 6th most common type of cancer in Europe with around 150,000 new patients per year. Despite its severity and increasing prevalence, there is little awareness of this pathology. 60% of patients with advanced disease at diagnosis die within 5 years. The most common cancer in the head and neck...
III-Nitride semiconductors (GaN, InN, AlN and their alloys) know an extremely rapid and extensive development in electronics and optoelectronics where lighting represents the first application. White LED lighting systems are based on indirect phosphor photoluminescence with nitride LED as an exciting source, although nitride materials offer theoretically the unique potential of a direct electroluminescence at...
Quantum Simulators (QS) are systems that evolve a physical process obeying to the same constituent laws of quantum mechanics as the system under examination. While QS are still in their infancy, an industrial model would need a large degree of automation to address the hardware system calls, interpret results from measurements and perform recursive quantum...
SUGAR’s objective is the development of an augmented reality (AR) system for minimally-invasive robotic-assisted spinal surgeries. It is agreed that AR has potential to foster the adoption of minimally invasive surgery (MIS), but it suffers from technical problems for which no suitable solutions exist: insufficient tracking precision, complex workflows, low framerates and lack of visualisation...
Malodours produced by wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are an expanding concern as cities surround these facilities. Malodours lower citizens’ quality of life by undesired odour exposure and nuisance, and may negatively impact tourism. Odours are the main cause of pollution perception, together with dust and noise. In particular, WWTPs produce gaseous emissions that might be...
The H2I2 proposal aims at designing an innovative integrated imaging system that could disrupt the field of particle therapy by providing a lightweight, cost effective, and highly performant solution to the major challenges in precise delivery of the dose to the patient. Particle therapy is an advanced form of radiation therapy, which uses beams of...
Dementia is a devastating age-related disease with important public health challenges. Worldwide cost of dementia exceeds US$ 800 billion. Every 3 seconds a new case of dementia is diagnosed and the number of patients will almost double to 82 million by 2030. Up to 75% of patients with dementia have Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Accumulation of...
The aim of this project is to develop a new x-ray micro computed tomography (micro-CT) technique that will allow performing high-resolution scans with significantly less radiation dose than conventional machines. In the latter, dose generally increases cubically with increasing the spatial resolution; therefore, high-resolution scans require high doses. This means that such scans are not applicable to...
Safe environmental conditions and environmental monitoring have great importance in our life. The early detection of dangerous events, such as earthquakes, large-scale fires, appearing of poisoning or flammable gases, water and soil pollutions are critical to prevent oncoming cataclysms. Here we propose an integrated smart device that can be part of a network, capable to detect any...
Much of the knowledge that we have from our world stems from the analysis of images. Using optics and cameras, we can map how much light a sample absorbs or how by how quickly the light propagates in a medium (both together are described by the complex refractive index). From these spectral properties, we can...
3D-META proposes an entirely new principle for beam steering of relevance to 3D imaging with lidar microsensors. Our proposed mechanism avoids the fundamental limitations associated with current MEMS tip-tilt micromirrors by instead using MEMS to tune the electromagnetic properties of gap surface plasmon metasurfaces. Using such dynamic metasurfaces we target a factor 10 increase in scanning angle range...
The present project aims to develop a wood disease detection sensor based on a bio-mimetic principle: repeatedly hitting the tree and listening. Animals such as the Aye-aye Daubentonia madagascariensis use their long, thin finger to constantly hit the surface of the trunks. At the same time, their extremely sensitive ear allows them to differentiate and locate those areas...
