Photonics & Light-Based Innovation for Severe Injury

The Photonics & Light-Based Innovation for Severe Injury Portfolio focuses on meeting multiple military medical needs with innovative diagnostic, imaging, and therapeutic solutions based on optical science and technology; and includes combining those solutions with technologies like acoustics, electronics, and nano-technology. Light-based solutions can be small, fast, lightweight, and low power; making them deployable at low cost and amenable to automation. In order to study solutions to multiple needs, the program seeks to transition efforts to other agencies or commercial funding opportunities at the earliest possible moment after feasibility and efficacy are established. An example includes the use of fractional lasers for treating painful and disfiguring scars.

Additional key efforts include:

• Blue light disinfection of wounds and surgical scars
• Low-level light treatment to boost the useful life of blood platelets
• The use of micro-bubbles in the blood stream to perform a variety of important functions non-invasively