October 15, 2008--A consortium led by ultrafast fiber-laser manufacturer Fianium (Southampton, England) is to develop and evaluate advanced white-light (supercontinuum) fiber lasers for biomedical imaging applications.

The $3.6-million "WhiteLase" project is co-funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board (Swindon, England) and brings together Fianium, the Centre for Photonics and Photonic Materials (CPPM) at the University of Bath, and Edinburgh Instruments Ltd.

The project aims to deliver UV-content supercontinuum sources and ultrabright visible supercontinuum sources and evaluate the technology for fluorescence imaging applications. The new lasers will offer UV content down to below 300 nm and provide spectral power densities an order of magnitude higher than those of existing commercial supercontinuum sources.

John Clowes, director of business development at Fianium and coordinator of the WhiteLase project, said, "This award is a clear recognition of our achievements at the forefront of supercontinuum fiber laser technology. Fianium's past collaboration with the CPPM at the University of Bath has been extremely successful and will be a great benefit in developing revolutionary new white light fiber lasers for biomedical imaging applications."

William Wadsworth, who leads the CPPM team, added, "The CPPM has a long and distinguished history in supercontinuum generation and the challenging objectives of the WhiteLase project will undoubtedly lead us to exciting new developments in photonic crystal fibers."

As an end-user partner within the project, Edinburgh Instruments is gaining first access to the newly developed supercontinuum fiber lasers and evaluating these sources in a host of fluorescence imaging applications. "Fianium is also working with several industrial partners in the US and government laboratories on developing applications of supercontinuum systems," adds Vladimir Kozlov, vice president of business development at Fianium. "Most of these applications require operation across the UV spectral range, making the project very relevant to many of our customers."

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led executive nondepartmental public body established by the UK government. Its role is to promote and support research into, and development and exploitation of, technology and innovation for the benefit of UK business. It is sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities, and Skills (DIUS; London, England).

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Wed Oct 15 08:35:00 CDT 2008