It’s time to look back on our achievements and highlights from the second year of the fastMOT project!
As we enter the third year of our project, we can report some great results from the past 12 months: From … and … to five new publications and several presentations at international conferences.
All work packages are up and running, and contributing towards our vision of developing a revolutionary new light sensing solution for non-invasive imaging of deep organ structures:
WP1: Detector development
At TU Delft, we have successfully tested switching structures which are important for array readout. This work has now been published in the Journal Nano Letters. We have demonstrated (and patented) the method for capacitive readout of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (serving as pixels of the camera in this project). We have shown proof-of-principle optical gating of the detectors. In addition, we have successfully fabricated first detector arrays and delivered them to partners for mid-project experiments.
Figure from Nano Lett. 2025, 25, 11, 4401-4407, used under Creative Commons license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
WP2: Detector system development
At Single Quantum, we have been working on the development of the SNSPD system that will host the detector(s) developed in WP1. At the moment, we have achieved 100-channels system, and we are working on expanding it to host even more channels to accommodate for the ultimate chip from the fastMOT project.
WP3: Physics light simulation and modelling
We have now integrated all components of the instrument into the virtual instrument simulator (VIS), from light source to detector. This includes modeling the source power, laser repetition rate, and instrument response function (IRF), as well as detector characteristics such as SNSPD pixel size, number of pixels, and detection efficiency. Optical elements, including fibre diameter, numerical aperture, and system magnification, are also accounted for, enabling the generation of realistic synthetic data under experimental conditions. Simple physiological models have been incorporated to simulate the effects of dynamic events, such as changes in blood flow or oxygenation, on the signal and to evaluate the performance of various instrument designs. We are currently evaluating the maximum depth sensitivity achievable by our systems by investigating the effects of head curvature and testing various data processing pipelines, such as dual-slope methods, within the VIS. The simulator will also support further studies at 1064 nm, including the evaluation of oxygenated haemoglobin concentration recovery under different configurations.
WP4: Tomographic work station
In WP4 we worked towards the development of a final tomographic workstation by testing a laser with potential use for both SCOS and NIRS. The laser is a 1064 nm high coherence laser with tunable pulse width and repetition rate. We evaluated its ability to perform DCS measurements and compared the various pulse width and repetition rate settings through a systematic measurements campaign. We also studied the possibility of implementing 1064 nm light for two-wavelength NIRS by carrying out cuff occlusion measures on several subjects and comparing the quality of the output data for various wavelength pairs. The data analysis is still ongoing, but it will highlight the laser source configuration for the final workstation.
WP5: Laboratory and in vivo validation
In WP5, we have been working on testing the capabilities of the tomographic work station of WP4 for time-gated measurements using liquid phantoms with a small solid inclusion. The results from these tests suggested some modest improvements in the depth resolution using later time-gates. In the upcoming year we aim to further study time-gated analyses in layered medium as well as in-vivo. In addition to laboratory work, we have been working on developing an algorithm for retrieving blood flow from speckle contrast data. This algorithm significantly simplifies current methods for retrieving blood flow and will be especially important when managing large data sets from, for example, the full tomographic system that is being developed in fastMOT.
Besides, we completed our #WomeninScience interview series, in which the female scientific staff working on fastMOT tell us about their roles in our project and their experiences of finding their career in science.
Also, do not forget to take a look at our newly launched video interview series to learn more about the technical work packages of fastMOT.
We look forward to the third year of our project with many upcoming events, and where we continue to work on innovating medical imaging!
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