Research theme: Medical Photonics

Medical photonics is a unique and world-leading focus for medical research in St Andrews. This programme is founded on strong interdisciplinary collaboration with the School of Biology and the School of Physics and Astronomy, with whom we hold several collaborative grants in this area. Following the initial development of the interdisciplinary centre for medical photonics. This group holds a wide range of grant funding to exploit the interdisciplinary application of photonics in the medical environment.

• Sonoptics: exploits ultrasound and laser sciences for generic non-invasive therapies and nano- and micro-scale integration of glass-on-semiconductors for photonic components engineering.
• Raman spectroscopy methods have been developed to identify malignant bladder cells.
• Photonics methodologies are being used to enable objects to be visualized in dense media, and this addresses a constant problem in biological systems.

Innovative technologies have been developed for the navigation of surgical robots, for the enhancement of optical coherence tomography imaging, for the fabrication of tissue simulators. These advancements are being disseminated and exploited through patent applications, publications and knowledge transfer.

A range of techniques are being applied to determine the differing cell states of bacteria, in particular those cells that are adapted to long term survival and are relatively resistant to antibiotics.

Medical Photonics: Tomas Cizmar Research Group site