High brightness supercontinuum and tunable UV lasers have a wide range of applications in scientific and industrial markets including solar cell and semiconductor manufacturing, microscopy and lithography. Current supercontinuum lasers are limited to the visible and infrared spectral regions. Adding Vacuum UV below 200 nm (VUV) to the spectral range of these sources opens new important application areas in manufacturing and optical analysis. In a previous project by NKT, DTU, and DFM (UVSUPER), a novel approach was taken using an NKT-patented hollow-core optical fiber. Pressurizing this fiber with the noble gas argon and pumping it with short high-energy pulses allowed the generation of a broadband supercontinuum inside the hollow-core with a spectrum that reached down to 200 nm. In UVSOLAR we aim at: (1) improving the TRL level of the existing solution to TRL7 and extend the spectrum to Vacuum UV (VUV) 150 nm by using other noble gasses and by maturing the pump compression of the UV-module, the high pulse-energy fiber coupling, and the gas cell stability and pressure control: (2) demonstrating the added value of the laser system compared to existing supercontinuum and UV lasers in a number of key high-end commercial applications. These demonstrations include thin film solar cell scribing (Sunplugged), silicon solar cell laser doping (Topsil), DUV and VUV microscopy and scatterometry (DeltaPix and DFM) and semiconductor processing (3D Micromatic and KLA-Tencor - LoI)

This project will remove the number one bottleneck in the large-scale poultry slaughtering industry by the development of an advanced machine vision system able to replace the manual vet inspection in poultry slaughterhouses. The goal of the project is to develop a system ready for implementation at all Danish slaughterhouses and to export it world-wide. Since veterinary control is linked directly to food safety, there are strict requirements for a high detection rate and a low number of false positives. This coupled together with defects and diseases that covers all challenges from hard-to-detect fine-grained details to non-trivial holistic inspection of the whole bird, makes for a challenging computer vision task. This will push the boundaries of what is possible with today’s deep learning models for computer vision and has from a technical point to be solved involving spectral imaging. The developed vision system that involves public health, food safety and quality, will be validated in relation to manual internal and external inspection at selected slaughterhouses. It will be monitored by the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration's meat control department for the purpose of assessment as it will be presented for the veterinarian regulatory body in EU.

Misdiagnosis in psychiatry is a critical challenge that impedes early adequate treatment of patients with mental health conditions. Recently, this problem has gained attention from the national health authorities and the media. The challenge highlights a pressing need for precise biomarker tools to aid the differential diagnostic evaluations. The aim of VIRDIS is to develop an innovative virtual reality (VR) platform to improve diagnostic discrimination between several mental health disorders, including major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, psychosis spectrum disorders, borderline personality disorder, and dissocial personality disorder. In a collaboration with Khora Virtual Reality, Sensæ, and clinical research groups in the Mental Health Services, Capital Region of Denmark, we are conducting a pilot study of psychophysiological, behavioural, and self-report measures of emotional reactivity and -regulation across these diagnostic groups. The assessments involve VR-based film clips of various social scenarios combined with measurements of electrodermal activity, eye gaze patterns, and emotion ratings. Preliminary insights from the pilot study provide a strong basis for and guide the design of the proposed larger-scale project. VIRDIS will result in an innovative VR platform that can facilitate earlier correct mental health diagnoses and, thereby, timely effective treatment for patients and reduced socio-economic costs.