Conference Agenda

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common and serious disease, the third cardiovascular cause of death overall. It is responsible for 30000 annual deaths in Europe. After biological and clinical investigation, nearly half of VTE cases have no known origin (idiopathic VTE). Among the patients developing idiopathic VTE, about 30% of them would have a recurrent thromboembolic event, 70% would not be subjected to any recurrence. A balance must be struck between the risks of recurrent thrombosis if anticoagulant treatment is stopped versus the risks of bleeding associated with continued anticoagulation therapy that can go up to the course of decades. The search for new biomarkers allowing to best steer the treatment of patients is thus of major interest. Recent studies seem to link clot’s structure to a risk of recurrence. The aim of our work is to develop sensitive optical methods, in order to help with VTE patient’s prognosis, measuring and comparing the evolution of the optical scattering coefficient and biospeckle properties of a plasma during in vitro clot formation.

This work presents an endoscopic spatial frequency domain imaging (SFDI) system, which uses a 3D-printed micro-optical fringe projection lens mounted onto the tip of a multimode fiber for pattern generation. The optical fiber is connected to an incoherent light source for speckle-free illumination. Single snapshot imaging of optical properties (SSOP) was employed for image processing. The system was calibrated and tested on tissue-mimicking silicone phantoms with known optical properties. The results show that the endoscopic system is able to recover the reduced scattering and absorption coefficients over the field of view (FOV).

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has become a well-established technique to rapidly investigate biomolecular interactions in a multiplexed manner by achieving very low detection limits and minimal sample preparation. Nevertheless, further improvements in optical stability, coupling efficiency, and signal processing are required to fully exploit SPR in compact, fiber-based and field-deployable sensing platforms. In this work, we present a novel SPR sensing approach that combines advanced micro-optical integration with novel fluidics and data-driven signal analytics. Two-photon polymerization (2PP) is employed to fabricate freeform micro-optical interfaces directly on optical fiber facets, enabling precise and reproducible fiber coupling into integrated collimator geometries. This monolithic alignment strategy significantly improves optical throughput, reduces coupling losses, and enhances mechanical robustness compared to conventional bulk-optical assemblies. The approach is particularly well suited for miniaturized and multiplexed SPR sensor architectures. In parallel, we introduce an advanced laser cut SPR chip that enables novel data analytics methods for SPR signal evaluation, combining advanced preprocessing, adaptive baseline correction, and multivariate analysis to improve detection sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio. The proposed analytics framework enables more robust extraction of resonance shifts under low signal conditions and in the presence of optical and environmental perturbations. 2PP-micro-optics and data analytics enable sensitive, scalable SPR.

Bioactive glass fibers have been showing a promising potential

for biomedical applications as biosensors and photostimulators. However, at

the current state of art, they are limited in their applicability by the poor

penetration of visible light through the skin, and the consequent

impossibility of reaching deep tissues to provide the light therapy. This study

proposes an innovative strategy based on the upconversion of near infrared

radiation, characterized by deeper penetration through the human tissues,

into therapeutical visible wavelengths. Composite fibers were developed

from borosilicate bioactive glasses with embedded crystals able to emit red

light upon near infrared pumping (980nm). No undesired crystallization

phenomena were observed after embedding the crystals in the glass matrix.

The upconversion spectrum of the composite confirmed the presence of the

crystals in the glass matrix. We demonstrate that the addition of the crystals

in the bioactive does not alter the bioactivity of the glass. Finally, the fiber

was found to maintain its spectroscopic properties upon immersion in

artificial cerebrospinal fluid for up to 14 days.

Ultraviolet light is widely applied for sterilization, but its use in occupied environments has been constrained by concerns regarding skin and eye damage. Recent evidence shows that far‑UVC radiation at very short wavelengths exhibits minimal penetration into biological tissues, substantially reducing health risks. This work presents a preliminary ex vivo and in vivo study evaluating a far‑UVC light barrier for controlling airborne bacterial and viral transmission. The system is based on an optimized excimer lamp emitting at 222 nm, where optical penetration is limited to a few micrometers while nucleic acid absorption remains high, enabling effective microbial inactivation. In vitro tests on *Staphylococcus aureus*, *Pseudomonas aeruginosa*, and SARS‑CoV‑2 demonstrated >99.9% bacterial reduction at an irradiation dose of ~15 mJ/cm². In vivo experiments using B6.Cg‑Tg(K18‑ACE2)2Prlmn mice showed a significant reduction in viral load in healthy animals when the light barrier was activated between infected and uninfected groups. These results indicate that far‑UVC light barriers offer a promising and safe strategy for reducing airborne pathogen transmission.

We introduce a hierarchical manufacturing method for creating

anatomical phantoms based on polydimethylsiloxane. This platform enables

independent control of optical, acoustic, mechanical, and morphological

properties, replicating skin vascularization and lung porosity. This strategy

provides a scalable, reproducible alternative to animal models for

translational biomedical imaging