{"id":164346,"date":"2025-06-24T11:48:06","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T15:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=164346"},"modified":"2025-06-24T11:59:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T15:59:19","slug":"lighting-the-way-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2025\/06\/24\/lighting-the-way-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Lighting the Way Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jessica Colarossi and Patrick L. Kennedy<\/p>\n

We\u2019re beyond the light bulb here. At the BU College of Engineering, photonics and optical systems researchers are collaborating to advance the practical uses of light to tackle global challenges. Working with students and with colleagues in other schools and institutions as well as in industry and government, they\u2019ve developed innovations such a space telescope\u2014BU\u2019s first device to land on the moon\u2014aimed at understanding our magnetosphere; a medical device that uses light to monitor blood pressure and track cancer; and a novel 3D imaging technology for autonomous navigation by night. And one BU ENG researcher\u2014known for demonstrating how tornado-shaped light beams might make for a greener Internet\u2014has taken the reins of the leading journal in the optics field. Hailing from biomedical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering, these researchers are lighting the way forward.<\/p>\n

Using light to track blood pressure and tumor treatments<\/h3>\n

If you light up the tip of your finger with a flashlight, you\u2019ll see the phenomenon called diffusive glow. That\u2019s what happens when all the cells and molecules that make up your finger absorb and scatter the steady beam of light in an instant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe light changes direction millions of times so that it turns into a diffuse red glow,\u201d explains Associate Professor Darren Roblyer<\/a> (BME). Understanding how light interacts with living cells and tissues is the foundation of his work.<\/p>\n

\"Darren
Darren Roblyer (BME). Photo by Jackie Ricciardi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Roblyer and his team are testing ways to monitor biological processes\u2014like blood pressure, oxygen levels, and disease progression\u2014with light waves. For example, studying the way different wavelengths create patterns when absorbed and scattered can tell Roblyer about the metabolic signals in a person\u2019s blood. Over the past several years, he\u2019s developed a blood pressure monitoring device that does not involve a cuff squeezing your arm, with the aim of getting a more accurate reading than the current, sometimes uncomfortable, options.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis technology measures the optical effects of what happens when your heart beats,\u201d says Roblyer, who\u2019s also a member of the BU Photonics Center. Each time your heart beats, blood flow speeds up and then slows down, and, at the same time, arteries expand and contract, increasing and decreasing the volume of blood in the arteries. \u201cWe\u2019re measuring both of those things, and we are extracting a whole lot of information from those waveforms and then using that to predict blood pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The technology, called speckle contrast optical spectroscopy, uses multiple wavelengths, from visible to near-infrared light (NIR), which is just past what our eyes can see, to monitor blood pressure. The device clips over the finger and straps around the wrist. In a recent study, the team found that the device took highly accurate, continuous blood pressure measurements on 30 individuals successfully over several weeks.<\/p>\n

Roblyer is also testing a similar type of optical technology\u2014measuring the absorption and scattering of light waves\u2014for reading metabolic signals of cancer cells. He has been working with Naomi Ko, a BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine associate professor of medicine and a medical oncologist at Boston Medical Center (BMC), on developing a new tool for monitoring how well breast cancer tumors respond to chemotherapy or radiation treatment.<\/p>\n

The metrics that their device measures\u2014like the concentration and ratio of oxygenated and deoxygenated red blood cells\u2014can be used to predict whether or not a tumor is likely to shrink. Ko and Roblyer have been testing the device in clinical settings, and plan to continue analyzing its effectiveness. Eventually, Roblyer wants the device to be smaller and transportable, so that patients can use it at home, and send the readings to their doctors without needing to schedule an appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis research is driven by collaboration,\u201d says Roblyer. \u201cWe\u2019ve assembled a multidisciplinary team\u2014including engineers, physicists, physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, business and regulatory specialists, manufacturing experts, students\u2014PhD, master\u2019s, and undergraduate\u2014as well as volunteers and patients. Each of these perspectives is essential for developing the technology and implementing it into the standard-of-care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most important things I think I do is, as we\u2019re developing these technologies, we\u2019re talking to a lot of physicians, understanding what their unmet needs are, and helping to understand whether our technologies could help,\u201d Roblyer adds. \u201cMy hope for this work is to make a real impact in the lives of patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the moon, a BU-built telescope shows us solar wind<\/h3>\n

On March 2, after traveling 238,855 miles from Cape Canaveral, a shiny, golden spacecraft touched down on the moon. Among the 10 aerospace instruments carried by the autonomous moon lander, a telescope pointed back at our home planet. The Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) was designed and built by Associate Professor Brian Walsh<\/a> (ME, ECE) and his colleagues. It is the first BU-created device to ever land on another planetary body, and it captured the first-ever images of the boundary of Earth\u2019s magnetic field.<\/p>\n

Part of NASA\u2019s Blue Ghost Mission 1, LEXI has given Earthlings an unprecedented view of our magnetosphere, the magnetic bubble that shields us from harmful radiation, deflecting the constant flow of solar wind and high-speed charged particles emanating from the sun.<\/p>\n

\"Brian
Brian Walsh (ME, ECE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Walsh began measuring X-ray signals in the atmosphere as a postdoctoral researcher at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in 2009. His team at BU received funding from NASA to develop the LEXI telescope in 2019. In the years since, the team worked hard choosing materials, doing the math to determine the ideal dimensions, adding electronics and computing systems, crafting specially engineered glass lenses, and testing for durability. The 24-pound telescope needed to withstand intense vibrations and temperature swings, and communicate seamlessly to the lab\u2019s control room. The team collaborated with researchers from NASA Goddard, Johns Hopkins University, University of Miami, and the University of Leicester.<\/p>\n

The device\u2019s innovative optical lenses mimic lobster eyes\u2014technology prototyped in the 1990s that was inspired by the way lobsters can see in dark, murky environments\u2014that pick up even the faintest glowing X-ray signals, called soft X-rays. The crustacean-inspired lenses in LEXI were specially fitted to withstand space flight.<\/p>\n

After the team completed LEXI and successfully tested it, they transported the device by truck to Firefly Aerospace\u2019s headquarters in Austin, Texas, where it was installed in the Blue Ghost lander. After the launch and landing, Walsh and his students stayed connected to the telescope through the lander\u2019s computer systems, receiving the X-ray signals that helped paint a picture of the boundary of Earth\u2019s magnetic field.<\/p>\n

Those X-rays are released when a charged atom emitted from the sun, like an oxygen ion, slams into a neutral particle, like hydrogen, which floats around in abundance at Earth\u2019s outer atmosphere. When the particles collide, the oxygen ion steals an electron from the hydrogen, and that process releases an X-ray. LEXI recorded those invisible wavelengths of light, constantly present around our planet, for seven days. After that, the sun set on the moon. It is presumed that the icy temperatures\u2014dipping as low as \u2013208 degrees Fahrenheit\u2014then disabled the lander and all of its payloads permanently.<\/p>\n

In that short window, LEXI transmitted data that will help answer \u201cbig outstanding questions,\u201d Walsh says, like whether we can predict when and how Earth receives solar energy in the amounts that cause geomagnetic storms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in this bubble, this magnetosphere,\u201d says Walsh. \u201cSome days, a lot of energy breaks into that magnetic bubble. We\u2019re trying to understand how that process works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using the light we can\u2019t see<\/h3>\n

When you look out your window at night, you expect to see objects\u2014a tree, a neighbor\u2019s house\u2014illuminated by street lamps or moonlight. If there were a power outage on a moonless night, you\u2019d see only darkness.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s no light out there, though. \u201cThere is light,\u201d says Professor Vivek Goyal<\/a> (ECE). \u201cIt\u2019s just at wavelengths that you can\u2019t see with the naked eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Vivek
Vivek Goyal (ECE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the aid of an ordinary thermal camera or night vision goggles, you could see something\u2014at least the outlines of nearby objects. But Goyal says a much richer sense of the surroundings can be gleaned from that invisible-to-us light, and his team is developing the more sophisticated data processing needed to do it. Someday, their 3D imaging technology might be used for mapping and navigation for autonomous vehicles, among other applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can infer distance,\u201d says Goyal. \u201cThe atmosphere is not only absorbing light but also emitting light, as a function of wavelength, and we can mathematically model that. There\u2019s different absorption at different wavelengths as light travels through the air, so light that\u2019s traveled a longer distance has a different spectrum than light that was emitted very close to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goyal and colleagues have begun successfully picking up distance cues by passively measuring thermal radiation at these various wavelengths that are too long for the naked eye. Their sensor technology is passive in the sense that it detects light, but doesn\u2019t emit light.<\/p>\n

For Goyal, the work of traditional thermal imaging is almost \u201ctoo easy,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of the prior work was related to the Air Force, where they studied tracking a missile or an airplane\u2014something much hotter than the atmosphere. We want to be able to use this absorption principle to do ranging [determining distances] for scenes where the objects are not necessarily hotter than the air at all\u2014in fact, the objects could be colder than the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe separate out the effects of material and temperature,\u201d Goyal says. \u201cSo if an autonomous vehicle is navigating at night, and an obstacle is just about the same temperature as the road, it would look the same to an ordinary thermal camera, whereas our sensor would discern the difference and be able to navigate around it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students and postdocs in Goyal\u2019s lab hail from disciplines including computer science, materials science, electrical engineering, and computer engineering, and his colleagues include researchers at MIT, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.<\/p>\n

\u201cResearch is so social,\u201d says Goyal. \u201cA lot of it has to do with connecting with people with the same interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re beyond the light bulb here. At the BU College of Engineering, photonics and optical systems researchers are collaborating to advance the practical uses of light to tackle global challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21681,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21681"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164346"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164352,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164346\/revisions\/164352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}