Exhibiting at Laser World of Photonics 2025 with a live demo, Singular Photonics is debuting its latest SPAD sensor tech, which it says enables contactless blood flow monitoring in real time.
Designed for the real-time, non-invasive monitoring of blood flow, Singular Photonics’ 512 x 512 single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) Andarta sensor is being demonstrated at Laser World of Photonics 2025 in Munich this week.
Hosted by AMS Technologies, Singular says the demo will show how the sensor performs diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) directly on-chip, with no external computing of physical contact required.
According to Singular Photonics, the Andarta device integrates a 3D-stacked, backside-illuminated (BSI) CMOS architecture to monitor microvascular dynamics in real time. During the demo, it will be used to track blood flow changes in a fingertip, highlighting its capacity to detect subtle variations in perfusion and cardiac pulsations at sub-microsecond resolution.
The system processes data directly within the sensor itself, enabled by a 128×128 “macropixel” array embedded within the chip, capable of performing in-pixel autocorrelation computations, says the company, and that this removes the need for off-chip data transfer or post-processing, which traditionally slows down similar optical measurement methods.
The sensor is said to deliver a compute throughput of up to 500bn multiply-accumulate operations per second (MAC/s), all while operating at just 0.3W of power. According to Singular Photonics, it’s the sensor’s low power requirements and compact footprint and low power requirements that position it as a potential tool not only in biomedical settings, but also in fields like pharmaceutical research, clean energy and agritech — where detailed, flow-based sensing can yield insights into biological or chemical processes.
The Andarta platform uses a vertically stacked architecture, with a high fill-factor SPAD detection layer positioned above a logic layer for processing. This configuration reportedly enables a high signal-to-noise ratio and efficient photon detection across its array, and the integration of more than 120m transistors supports a dense, real-time computation pipeline within each macropixel.
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