Invited Speakers

Sensing technologies for cerebral and cardiovascular monitoring

Abstract

With the growing aging population and prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, there is an increasing demand for developing personal healthcare systems that can frequently collect physiological parameters of patients during their daily life, thus allowing early disease detection and timely response of health treatments. Wearable electronics could be an ideal platform for such purpose; however, the current sensing technologies are not yet able to provide continuous, reliable, and precise physiological measurements with a compact wearable system. In this talk I will introduce several emerging device technologies and analytical methods that may enable a new generation of sensing devices for medical applications. First, I will use functional near-infrared spectroscopy as an example to discuss the development of high-sensitivity optical sensors for very weak light signal detection. I will talk about how material selection and device design can be utilized to address the trade-off between optical gain and bandwidth of photodetectors. Secondly, I will talk about the development of new pressure sensors and sensor arrays, with a focus on solving the commonly seen alignment-sensitive and crosstalk issues of the devices.