Home

Photobiomed Research Group

We are interested in developing digital optical sensing and transduction methods, mostly for medical and biological applications.  Photonics technologies are used to offer new functionalities, compactness, robustness, being easy to handle, and with possibilities to be integrated into other instruments, and with applications in other areas, such as biomedical applications. Our research welcomes thinkers from different fields of science, including physics, engineering, biomedical sciences, medical sciences, and computer science.

Our group focuses on using non-invasive, usually non-contact, sensors and systems (in the visible and near-visible light spectrum) for the development and validation of photobiomedical instrumentation.

Among the areas that we touch directly or indirectly are physics, biomedical engineering, spectroscopy, computational optics, signal processing, and mathematical and physical modeling, among others. We work on developing novel devices that are smaller, cheaper, and more accessible versions of older techniques, as well as biomedical sensors for monitoring vital signs and related information. Our research also focuses on detecting the biological states of health and disease through non-invasive, non-contact measurements, and portable, and smartphone apps for measurement and diagnostic aiding. Additionally, we explore the efficiency and efficacy of cosmetics, and the use of retinography and ophthalmologic applications. We are mostly interested in continuous (cw) and near continuous (near cw), low coherence, light-matter interactions.

To carry out our research, we require skills in areas such as the interaction of light with biological tissues, properties of light and scattering media, optical systems and sensors, computational imaging and vision, color science, and image analysis. We also need expertise in signal processing, algorithms, programming, mathematical and physical modeling, machine learning, and statistics. Telemedicine and self-care are also areas of interest that we explore.

Our focus is on adapting existing optical sensors and systems, particularly simple and low-cost instrumentation, through the incorporation of mathematical models and novel ideas, to explore new possibilities in biomedical imaging and sensing. Our goal is to emphasize the importance of creative ideas, models, and the intelligent use of physics in achieving application goals in the photobiomedical measurements.