Oesophageal cancer has a very low 5-year survival rate because it is hard to detect early enough to treat. By using additional properties of light that are discarded by conventional endoscopes, in particular optical phase and polarisation, we can more clearly see the micro-structural tissue changes present in early-stage cancer. I am building an endoscope that measures properties of coherent light in order to enable physicians to identify oesophageal cancer earlier.
Next destination: Assistant Professor, University of Nottingham, UK
In this paper I made a phase and polarisation sensitive camera using a single pixel detector. The camera has extremely high sensitivity at 1550nm, where normal silicon sensors don't work, so could be useful for telecomms or imaging in the NIR.
In this paper, a colleague and I developed a novel method of adaptively correcting aberrations to make high quality Fourier projectors using low-cost components such as ball-lenses. The algorithm first maps the aberrations to a sparse basis and then uses a hybrid genetic-steepest descent optimisation algorithm to empirically determine the global optimum.
In a collaboration with DTU, we performed the first experimental measurement of non-linear mode coupling. That is, by using high-power lasers we were able to modulate the refractive index of glass to shift light between spatial modes in a few-mode fibre. This could potentially have uses in future all-optical switches for high-speed telecommunication networks
IEEE Photonics Society Summer Topicals – because it was in Hawaii. Highlights included the swimming pool with turtles, the swimming pool with dolphins, and the non-swimming pool with sharks. The conference itself was very interesting: an added bonus.
