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This is a list of student projects that were available in the past and it is meant to give a flavour of the type of activities that can be carried out in our laboratory. If interested, please contact Prof. Edoardo Charbon with a full CV to inquire about the current availability of projects for students.

Characterization and optimization of a photosensor for medical application

Semester, Master, Diploma project

Description: For a medical imaging development project, a fluorescence lifetime imager has been designed. It consists of an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), as well as an FPGA based circuit serving as between the ASIC and a PC’s USB port. The student will participate in the characterisation of the imager in the context of a development team. The student will also participate in the definition of the specifications of the next ASIC which will be developed in our group jointly with a local biomedical startup.

ASIC PhotographPatient with tumour

ASIC photographPatient with tumour

 

Keywords: FPGA, Medical Imaging, System Characterisation

Contact: François Powolny

Characterisation of a novel single-photon avalanche diode sensor

Master/Semester project

Description: In this project you will help to characterise a novel CMOS Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) designed in our lab. This sensor will be used in several biomedical applications requiring very high speed and/or sensitivity like time-resolved optical imaging or fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM). The chip will be mounted on a printed circuit board connected to an FPGA card which provides the interface to a computer. Your task will be to program the FPGA card and the computer to interface with the sensor chip and measure its characteristics like speed, sensitivity, noise and others. Depending on the outcome of your work you will be involved in the publication of the results.

Location: University Hospital Zürich

Required skills: FPGA programming in VHDL, Computer programming in C, Basic electronics laboratory knowledge (soldering iron, oscilloscope, etc.)

Contact: Juan Mata Pavia

Characterisation of a novel SPAD Array Imaging IC

Master/Semester project

Description: In this project you will help to characterise a novel CMOS imaging IC using Single Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) designed in our lab. This IC will be used in several applications requiring very high speed and/or sensitivity like in a disdrometer (measures drop size and velocity distribution of rain drops) or in fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM). The chip will be mounted on a printed circuit board connected to an FPGA card which provides the interface to a computer. Your task will be to program the FPGA card and the computer to interface with the sensor chip and measure its characteristics like speed, sensitivity, noise and others. There is an existing project for a similar chip as a starting point. Depending on the outcome of your work you will be involved in the publication of the results.

Required skills: FPGA programming in VHDL, Computer programming in C, Basic electronics laboratory knowledge (soldering iron, oscilloscope, etc.)

Contact: Samuel Burri

Disdrometer

Master project

Description: In our lab we have recently designed and built a camera prototype capable of capturing over 6000 frames per second with a resolution of a single photon. The camera was designed to freeze the drops of rain to analyse their shape, speed, and density for environmental studies.
The camera prototype consists of a 32×32 pixel array that was recently expanded to 1/16 of a megapixel. Due to the high frame rate and the consequently high data rate, it is necessary to develop very efficient image processing techniques to perform three fundamental operations:

  • drop detection
  • time tagging
  • geometry analysis

The results of the analysis should be delivered in real time to enable statistical analysis of rain off-line in a PC/Mac. Since the bottleneck of the system is the communication between chip and PC/Mac, the three operations should be implemented first off-line in Matlab or C++ and later ported to the FPGA available between the camera chip and the USB using VHDL or Verilog. Due to time constraints, the candidate should work with the 32×32 pixel array.

Contact: Edoardo Charbon

CMOS-SPAD Systems with Multi-GHz Sampling Rate and Embedded Processing

PhD project

Description: This project entails the research of ultra-high speed integrated systems for the detection and time-discrimination of low intensity optical beams reflected from real-time scenes. The goal is to measure the depth of a scene with a multi-pixel integrated sensor at a certain field-of-view using time-of-flight based distance measuring techniques.
The project will involve advanced CMOS system design, ultra high-speed component design, micro-optics, and self-amplified CMOS detectors, all operating in time domain at gigahertz clock frequency and low power. During the project the candidate will familiarise him/herself with VLSI system architecture, custom circuit design, embedded processor design and optimization, multi-core FPGA system design, and opto-electronic experimentation.
The successful candidate should have a good background in VHDL/Verilog and experience programming FPGA boards.

Contact: Edoardo Charbon

Reclaiming Light Loss in CMOS Single Photon Sensors

Semester, Diploma, Master, Predoctoral project

Description: In our lab several single photon detector arrays of various sizes have been designed in CMOS. One of the major disadvantages of our technology is a small fill factor, i.e. the ratio between active and pixel areas. There exist several techniques to reclaim part of the light loss due to low fill factor. One of the most effective optical techniques is the use of microlenses. Commercial microlense arrays are available but generally not at the correct pitch and/or focal length. In this project the student will study the use of a commercial microlense array whereby the focal length is optimised for a telescope application. Tests on the fill factor improvement under a number of illumination and timing conditions will be conducted on a single pixel. If, in addition to focal length, the pitch can be matched, the tests can be extended to larger arrays. Design recommendations should be generated for a ad hoc pixel array or redesign of the detector array.

Contact: Edoardo Charbon

An Optical Bio-Assay Microarray for Quantitative Parallel Analysis

Master, Predoctoral project

Description: AQUA researchers have recently designed an array of pixels capable of detecting a single photon. Many chemical reactions underlying a biological process release light which, if properly detected, enables a quantitative characterisation of the process. When the process involves tiny amounts of matter or light concentrations, the number of photons is also limited. Therefore very sensitive detectors need be devised. In this project we propose to couple a single photon diode array fabricated in CMOS to a device similar to the family of microarrays fabricated at Berkeley (see picture). The combined device will be devised to maximise the optical coupling between the source of photons and each of the detectors in the array. Experiments involving bio-luminescence and fluorescence will be conducted with the new device for quantitative observations.

Keywords: bio-assay, single photon detector, microarray

Contact: Edoardo Charbon, Luke Lee

Cooperation: University of California, Berkeley

Dynamic visualization of biochemical reaction in a Microfluidic chip

Diploma, Master, Predoctoral project

Description: Conventionally, a biochemical reaction has been observed using bulky and expensive optical microscopy. A µ-TAS (Micro Total Analysis System) device, which is miniaturised chemical laboratory on a chip, is an attractive candidate for next generation biochemical and human sensing devices. However, bulky and expensive tools are still necessary even if the chip is miniaturised. The goal of this investigation is a realisation of a compact and convenient bio-analysis system to integrate a highly sensitive image sensor and µ-TAS bio-chip.

What you will learn: CMOS image sensor technology, MEMS technology and biochemical knowledge.

Keywords: u-TAS, Image sensor, Biosensor

Contact: Edoardo Charbon, Kazuaki Sawada

Cooperation: Toyohashi University of Technology