Lighting up the lungs

The PROTEUS Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) is funded by EPSRC and is a consortium of three universities, The University of Edinburgh, The University of Bath and Heriot Watt University. PROTEUS brings together a set of internationally-recognised researchers led by a multi-disciplinary team of academics who have world-class track records in fibre optic research through to sensing and imaging, signal processing, machine learning and clinical care.

PROTEUS aim is to deliver a healthcare technology which will sit next to the bedside of a critically ill patient in the Intensive Care Unit. The fiber optic based equipment will have the capability of in vivo imaging of distal lung to see infection (bacteria, fungus etc) and inflammation (immune cells). It will also sense clinically relevant parameters such as pH, glucose and oxygen in the distal lung.

My work (along with the team) at the QMRI Hub at the Royal Infirmary is to bring together the technologies from across the project and applies them to biological models. We have developed whole lung models (ovine and human) to test and validate the imaging system as well as chemical sensors developed in the project.