Reliable vital-sign monitoring
It's essential in many healthcare settings, but current methods often depend on skin contact, adhesives or wearables that can irritate the skin or be difficult to use for newborns, fragile patients or long-term home care. Some optical techniques also show reduced accuracy when lighting conditions change or when used across diverse skin tones. These limitations make continuous, gentle and inclusive monitoring challenging in real-world health environments.
At imec at Holst Centre, we research Speckle Plethysmography (SPG).
A non-contact optical method that measures physiological signals by analysing how coherent light scatters in the skin. When a laser illuminates the surface, it creates a speckle pattern that changes as blood flows and vessels move. By capturing these subtle optical variations with a camera and dedicated algorithms, speckle sensing allows the estimation of heart rate, respiration and other circulatory dynamics without requiring physical contact.
Our focus
This photonics-based approach offers a pathway to more comfortable, inclusive and stable monitoring in hospitals and at home. Speckle sensing can support frequent or long-term assessment without disturbing patients, reduce the need for contact-based sensors and help clinicians obtain consistent information across a wider population. It opens possibilities for health technologies that are easier to use, gentler for vulnerable patients and better suited to real-world care.
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