The main goal of this project is to develop an objective, accurate method to characterize and date bruises in forensic science.

Determining the age of injuries on a victim's body is an important aspect of forensic medicine, for example in cases of abuse. Visual assessment is most commonly used to estimate the age of a bruise. However, interpretation of the finding is purely subjective and relies strongly on the skills and experience of the observer, and might be disturbed by factors like e.g. ambient lighting or photo quality. The uncertainty in the result is therefore comparatively large. Thus, there is a need for an objective, easily manageable method to date bruises. This study has been initiated to develop such a method based on optical methods for tissue diagnostics, e.g. reflectance spectroscopy or hyperspectral imaging, combined with mathematical models developed to describe the temporal development of a bruise. To construct such a method it is important to have a thorough knowledge about how human tissue responds to a traumatic incident. This study is of an interdisciplinary nature and requires a combined effort from electrical engineering, physics, biomechanics, medicine and forensic science. See also the list of publications .

Atherosclerotic plaque created in the coronary arteries may limit the blood supply of the heart muscle, and in the worst case may lead to sudden death. Optical spectroscopy is a promising method to find and classify these plaques such that suitable treatment can be given. In this project, spectroscopy is being used to survey and classify plaque both by way of optical fibers and hyperspectral imaging.

The work is part of a project on modeling and fabrication of nanowires lasers. The nanowires are approximately 10-100 nm in diameter and a few micrometers long. In this work we model the electromagnetic and electric properties associated to such nanowires, to be able to optimize the geometry and structure of the nanowires with respect to performance. For more information, see the nanolaser project.

Speckle reduction techniques will be investigated in order to find a decent method to reduce speckle contrast in laser display systems. Both established and new techniques will be tested. A modulator will be built based on the most promising speckle reduction method.

Photonic crystals are materials with periodic variations in the refractive index. This may for example be a transparent material with holes in a uniform and periodic pattern. Such materials may for example be used as insulators for light, optical filters, and in various sensors. Work is currently in progress to build a set-up to create such photonic crystals using interferometric lithography. The initial focus will be to use the crystals to improve the coupling of light out from a light emitting diode (LED).