The Lund University Medical Laser Centre (LIT) is a Centre at Lund University, Sweden fostering cross-disciplinary research and development with participants from three faculties. Within this team, a fruitful collaboration between physicists, physicians and chemists has emerged. The aim of our research is to develop and evaluate new diagnostic or therapeutic modalities. It is important that new modalities, proven to provide information of medical interest, are offered to the patients. It is thus necessary to have a very close collaboration between all the disciplines involved in the development, evaluation and medical introduction of novel techniques. The Centre also belongs to one of the largest laser centres in Northern Europe. This provides us with unique possibilities to test odd ideas in this area of research, as we have a lot of equipment available for short-term tests. The idea of white light time-resolved spectrometer was first developed and tested in the high power laser facility in Lund. We have also developed various instruments for in vivo fluorescence measurements and measurements of optical properties in tissue. This has given us a broad competence in this area and made it possible to conduct the proposed project without large investments in new equipment. The activities have also resulted in two spin-off companies.
The motivation of LIT to participate in NANO UB-SOUCRES is to use their expertise in tissue spectroscopy and to utilize a rather unique close collaboration between on one hand researchers and instrument developers and on the other hand clinical specialists. The Centre is also heavily involved in developing time-resolved tissue spectroscopy techniques and OCT spectroscopy in close collaboration with RISOE, and need for these developments improved light sources.