Medical imaging with single photon cameras

The goals of the project is to apply single photon imaging cameras and devices to medical imaging, for example imaging deep inside the human body and inside the brain. This will be achieved by combining the single photon counting hardware with novel software and computational techniques such as inverse retrieval algorithms and machine learning.
The single photon detectors will involve a range of devices such as emCCD cameras, new-generation SPAD cameras, single-pixel PMTs and superconducting detectors with picosecond resolution. The computational techniques will be partly developed within the group and partly within collaborations, e.g. with the groups of R. Murray-Smith (Glasgow University, Computing Science) and Y. Wiaux (Heriot-Watt University).
The project will be use these detectors and computational techniques, applied to a series od benchmark studies performed on non-biological scattering media (phantoms) that mimic human tissue, with the aim of optimising the maximum imaging depths and resolutions that are achievable when imaging absorbing materials and also cavities, embedded in the material. The final goal will then be to apply the optimised techniques to imaging inside the body.