In the science fiction movie Fantastic Voyage, the PROTEUS is a submarine that is miniaturised with all its crew to “about the size of a microbe” and sent into the body of a scientist to remove a blood clot from his brain. Although miniaturisation of a human body is clearly impossible, the dream of “touching” single cells has...
The RAMANTIS project aims to develop a unique system capable of ‘seeing’ the chemical composition of materials and biological tissues. Raman spectroscopy is a ubiquitous technique for material inspection, offering accurate and non-destructive identification of the composition of samples. Raman imaging (RI) applies this technique to extended two-dimensional samples. Current RI systems require scanning times of seconds to even...
Last decade strong technological effort provided the availability on the market of cheap chips integrating a full 77 GHz radar system, including the RF and the signal processing sections, which potentially offer an infinite variety of applications beyond the original one, i.e., automotive safety and autonomous drive. However an analogous effort on the radar antenna is yet to...
Blood gas measurements are a vital tool in monitoring the health of prematurely born children. About three quarters of all patients in neonatal intensive care units are monitored in this way to prevent morbidity and mortality, particularly from hyperoxia and hypoxia. However, current methods and technology suffer from major problems in both handling and reliability, which in the...
SCENT aims to realise isolated, single-chain polymeric nanostructures (i.e. conjugated polymers and carbon chains), featuring one-dimensional (1D) quantum-confined properties in configurations suitable for exploitation as gas-sensors. The key elements of our proposal are: i) the development of inert zeolites with hierarchical porosity controlled at the nm and sub-nm scale; which will be used to template the realisation of...
This phase I project scope is to develop the PTMsenseTM , a novel microscale electrochemical biosensor for highly sensitive detection of protein modifications. The biosensor will be further integrated (outside the scope of the phase I project) as the core technology of companion diagnostic kits that will allow matching a drug to a cancer patient in point-of-care settings....
Medical endoscopy is now a common but critical healthcare procedure to look inside, and perform medical procedures in the body. When performing endoscopic surgical procedures in the abdominal cavity (known as laparoscopy) only a small insertion cut needs be made into the abdominal wall. This is known as “key-hole” surgery or minimally invasive surgery. Its...
Brain tumor surgery presents complex challenges due to a delicate tradeoff between removing as much neoplastic tissue as possible while minimising the loss of brain function. This is usually obtained using intraoperative direct cortical stimulation (DCS) which is considered the gold standard technique for functional mapping of the cortex. Nevertheless, DCS may trigger seizures and can only be...
Lighting is present in most indoor areas. Apart from illumination, lighting infrastructure can be used for data communication using Visible Light Communication (VLC) technology. VLC encodes the dta into fast changes on the intensity of the LED light and, at the receiver, these intensity fluctuations are detected using a Photodiode. So far, the presence of opaque objects inside...
Unpredictability is usually perceived with a sense of uneasiness and discomfort. However, when it comes to secure our data, information, posts, pictures and whatever flows to (or from) the internet about us, protection relies on unpredictability. The impossibility for an eavesdropper or a hacker to break the walls protecting what sits on the net about us depends on...
There is a growing interest in portable, non-invasive brain monitoring technologies in the field of personalised healthcare. This is well in-line with the needs of the European population for accurate and fast neurological diagnostics and targeted treatment. As an example, there are 6 million people in Europe who suffer from epilepsy. In most hospital units,...
Project ThermoQuant will develop innovative, high-performance sensors for nanoscale thermal sensing and imaging. The ultimate goal is a breakthrough in nanoscale thermal sensing and a thermal imaging technology with sensitivities in the K/Hz½-range and spatial resolutions down to 10 nm. For this, the consortium partners will explore solid-state electronic spins in diamond as nanoscale temperature sensors. The accuracy targeted...
The main objective is to design and build the innovative CORaHE (COld Raman Head) sensor for Deep-UV Raman spectroscopy, to operate under cold environments between -30 and -5 oC. This portable sensor will perform non-destructive micro-Raman measurements of cold samples, without any limitation in size. The CORaHE sensor has been designed to cover the absence of technology to...
Advances in infrared photodetector based instrumentation technologies present significant development opportunities across a broad range of industries and applications. From security, health care and biosensing, to food plan analysis, geospatial mapping, petroleum exploration and intelligent transport, infrared photodetectors are the core components of modern light detecting instrumentation and play a key role in all the above applications. Despite...
Recent anatomical studies on macaque brains have revealed that 80% of the network connectivity occurs at the millimetre/centimetre, i.e. mesoscopic, scale, within brain areas (Markov). However, due to technical limitations, this scale remains by far the less studied (Chemla et al 2017). Most neuronal recording techniques are indeed restricted to microscopic (neuron, intra/extracellular recordings) or macroscopic scales (whole brain)....
We propose an opto-mechanical accelerometer working at the precision-limits imposed by quantum mechanics. Our chip-based approach combines our state-of-the-art designs in both nanophotonics and quantum phononics to pioneer new types of telecom sensors which are quickly becoming widespread in modern society. Using techniques recently developed at TU Delft we are now able to manipulate highstress films with unique optical...
Proton therapy is a promising cancer treatment modality with the ability to concentrate the deposited dose (Bragg peak) on the tumour while minimising collateral damage due to low dose to healthy surrounding tissue. However, uncertainties in the Bragg peak position limit clinical utility. Especially due to range uncertainties, patient movement and tissue deformation, the localisation accuracy is...
Glioblastoma (GB) is the major aggressive primary brain tumour in adults showing disproportion between high mortality compared to low overall incidence. Survival after detection is below 18 months even after standard aggressive treatment and no cure has been reported. Novel therapies (e.g. immunotherapy) may be very expensive and it may be relevant to have in...
