The purpose of the project is to conceive and to develop a complete set of equipment for fully-parallel multichannel (32 channels) time-resolved optical spectroscopy for non-invasive investigation of highly diffusive media. The main application is medical diagnosis through time-resolved in-vivo optical characterization of biological tissues. The measurements of optical absorption in tissues over a large spectral bandwidth (600-1000 nm) enhances the quantification of the concentration of optical absorbers. This technique is particularly promising for optical diagnosis (e.g. in breast cancer investigations) and for dynamic monitoring of tissue parameters (e.g. for blood perfusion).
The main goal of the project is the development of a spectroscopic system suitable for clinical environments and applications in the diagnosis of cancer-related diseases. Nevertheless, the Project was designed and carried out in order to guarantee a much wider applicability of the equipment, for example in fields such as time-resolved fluorescence measurements, optical biopsy, functional imaging, studies on molecular dynamics, and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). The proposed research will result in the development of a multichannel time-resolved spectroscopy system, operating in the near-infrared, and able to characterize biological tissues in-vivo and non-invasively. The major innovations of the equipment are: extreme miniaturization of the whole instrument, ease of portability, extremely low cost, high programmability and automation, high performances (such as the ability to detect single photons), spectral sensitivity extended up to 1000 nm, in-vivo acquisition times below one second, 100 ps time resolution in photon timing, and photon counting imaging up to 3.000.000 frame/s over 32 pixels. The proposed system will pave the way for new applications in clinics and industrial fields for pathology diagnosis and the real-time monitoring of biological processes. Moreover, the development of single-photon multichannel detectors that are sensitive in the visible and near-infrared wavelength ranges and are compact, low cost and time-resolved, is of utmost interest to many scientific fields. From a physic, biologic and clinical standpoint, the proposed equipment will deepen our knowledge of tissues, biological processes, and molecular activities, thanks to the extremely attractive combination of optical, instrumental, and electronic performance.