The Biomedical Device Engineering (BDE) expertise group, headed by prof. dr. ir. Ronald Thoelen, started in 2013  and it’s first focus was the development of  sensing applications situated in the various health(care) domains. The range of applications of its research focus broadened in the past years adding other domains such as food and feed or environmental safety where its sensor technology could be of added value.

The research focuses mainly on two sensing technologies. The group is much experienced in using advanced impedance read-out technologies for a variety of applications ranging from macro- to microscale. Such examples are using impedance spectroscopy or tomography to monitor wound-healing processes or embedding the sensing technology in lab-on-chip applications for the specific detection of small biomolecules. Next, the group is using electrical impedance tomography measurements to gain spatial insight and to monitor cell proliferation processes.

As a second read-out technology BDE is developing novel thermal techniques in which the thermal property of materials or interfaces are used as a diagnostic method. Using this method, the group successfully developed a method for identifying small contaminations in aqueous solutions or to use this technique to monitor bacterial growth and its resistance towards different antibiotics. Besides liquids the group is also using this technique to assess the quality of temperature measurements of solids.