CentRE of Excellence in Biochemical Sensing & Imaging

Accurate and precise sensing/imaging is a critical requirement in healthcare and water quality monitoring, specifically with a focus on bio-chemical analytes. Conventional solutions lack either one or more of the following requirements – sensitivity, specificity, resolution, deep-imaging capability, fast response, and nano- scale chemical fingerprints. Photonic modalities are capable of providing elegant and efficient solutions to the above issues, but are limited by light scattering or poor interaction with analytes leading to signal to noise ratio issues, and background interference leading to false positives.

Our CoE aims to address the above fundamental physical bottlenecks by pursuing a holistic approach, based on cutting edge enablers such as whispering gallery modes (WGMs), multi-photon excitation based fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) with Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) phenomenon, optics directly written on fiber- tip, MEMS and meta-surfaces based endoscopy, polaritons, nano-scale Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (Nano-FTIR), and two-dimensional (2D) materials.

References:

1. Nature Methods, 5, 591–596, 2008. Opto-Electronic Advances, 01, 180015, 2018. Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 043704, 2012. (WGM-based platform for Biochemical Sensing )

2. https://www.toptica.com/applications/ultrafast-studies/flim/ (Multiphoton Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy)

3. https://www.docpanel.com/blog/post/liver-lesions-types-causes-diagnosis-more (Multifunctional Deep Tissue Imaging)

4. PHYSICAL REVIEW X, 9, 041050, 2019 (Optical Metasurface Endoscopy)

5. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1263–1268, 2005. Nature Methods, 8, 26–29, 2011 (Optogenetics & Neural-Imaging)

6. PLoS ONE, 13(6), e0199112, 2018 (Nano-FTIR & NanoRaman Fingerprints)