Turgut Durduran

Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO)

Engineering Sciences

November 2015 – ICREA Research Professor February 2009 - Group Leader – Medical Optics

Dr. Turgut Durduran is a group leader at ICFO. He has founded the ICFO-Medical Optics group in 2009 when he joined ICFO and in 2014 he received his tenure and became a professor/group leader. In 2015, he became an ICREA, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, professor at ICFO. Over the years, the group has grown exponentially, currently, with eighteen PhD students, post-docs and engineers collaborating with about a dozen hospitals and biomedical institutes world-wide. He has participated in many advisory boards, grant review boards ranging from the National Institutes of Health to the review of the FP7 projects at the European Commission. He has authored 82 peer-reviewed papers and delivered over sixty invited talks in international conferences and colloquia.


Research interests

Turgut is a physicist who is an expert in biomedical optics. He studies the physics of photon propagation in biological tissues and builds machines that can see through our bodies like never before. His group is highly multi-disciplinary: physicists, engineers and medical doctors, and collaborates closely with hospitals and biomedical centers all around the world. Turgut’s current focus is the measurement of hemodynamics and oxygen metabolism. His dream is to see these devices becoming standard clinical equipment for the doctors of the future.

Selected publications

– Sekar SKV, Mora AD, Bargigia I, Martinenghi E, Lindner C, Farzam P, Pagliazzi M, Durduran T, Taroni P, Pifferi A & Farina A 2016, ‘Broadband (600-1350 nm) Time-Resolved Diffuse Optical Spectrometer for Clinical Use’, Ieee Journal Of Selected Topics In Quantum Electronics, 22, 3, 7100609.

– Ramirez G, Proctor AR, Jung KW, Wu TT, Han S, Adams RR, Ren J, Byun DK, Madden KS, Brown EB, Foster TH, Farzam P, Durduran T & Choe R 2016, ‘Chemotherapeutic drug-specific alteration of microvascular blood flow in murine breast cancer as measured by diffuse correlation spectroscopy’, Journal Biomedical Optics Express, vol. 7, issue 9, pp. 3610-3630.

– Johansson J, Mireles M,  Morales-Dalmau J, Farzam P, Martínez-Lozano M, Casanovas O & Durduran T 2016, ‘Scanning, non-contact, hybrid broadband diffuse optical spectroscopy and diffuse correlation spectroscopy system’, Biomedical Optics Express, vol. 7, issue 2, pp. 481-498.

– Lindner C, Mora M, Farzam P, Squarcia M, Johansson J, Weigel U.M, Halperin I, Hanzu FA & Durduran T 2016, ‘Diffuse Optical Characterization of the Healthy Human Thyroid Tissue and Two Pathological Case Studies’, PloS One  11(1): e0147851.


Selected research activities

The Horizon 2020 project Laser and Ultrasound Co-analyzer for Thyroid Nodules (LUCA) was started in February 2016 and Dr. Durduran is the coordinator. It aims at developing an innovative technology for thyroid cancer screening that will provide doctors with enhanced information required to provide better and more specific results in thyroid nodule screening and enable better diagnosis.

We play an important role in another European project, Babylux: An Optical Neuro-Monitor of Cerebral Oxygen Metabolism and Blood Flow for Neonatology. This is a project that aims to provide an innovative and reliable tool to monitor and assess brain blood flow and oxygenation in extremely preterm neonates.