Continuous health monitoring
This often relies on sensors that require skin contact, adhesives, or wearables, which can be uncomfortable or difficult to use for newborns, fragile patients, or long-term home care. Accuracy of these devices is often impacted by environmental conditions, such as variable lighting conditions. Another key influence on their reliability relates to how devices interact with human physiology; performance can be affected by factors such as tissue perfusion or skin tone. This creates a need for optical methods that can deliver reliable vital-sign information without physical contact and broader inclusiveness.
At imec at Holst Centre, we develop Speckle Sensing, a photonics-based technique that uses coherent light to measure physiological signals through changes in laser speckle patterns on the skin.
By combining compact light sources, imaging sensors and advanced algorithms, we can extract heart rate, respiration and other cardiovascular biomarkers by quantifying interference of coherent light on the skin. Our research also explores how integrated photonics can support the miniaturisation and stability of the required coherent illumination and detection elements.
Speckle Sensing explained
Our focus
This approach enables unobtrusive, contactless monitoring that is more robust across skin tones, less affected by poor perfusion and inherently insensitive to lighting conditions. It provides a pathway toward future health technologies that offer comfortable, reliable and continuous insights into a person’s physiological state in both clinical and home environments.
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