Real-time blood flow monitoring with the Andarta SPAD sensor.
At this year’s Laser World of Photonics in Munich, Singular Photonics debuted a live demonstration of a breakthrough in non-invasive blood flow monitoring. The demo showcased how our Andarta sensor performs real-time Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy (DCS) to detect blood flow changes through tissue — all without a single needle, contact pad, or delay. Just light, computation, and physiology in action.
The live setup demonstrated how the sensor captures real-time microvascular dynamics — tracking pulsatile blood flow at the fingertip in real time and resolving subtle changes in perfusion with high temporal resolution. Processing is performed on-chip, with real-time autocorrelation computation of blood cell motion.
This demo was more than a technical proof point. It provided a glimpse into the future of contactless, clinically relevant sensing — one that could influence healthcare, industrial process monitoring, and beyond.
A New Era of Optical Sensing
The demo was powered by our Andarta sensor, a 512×512 SPAD (single-photon avalanche diode) array built using 3D-stacked backside-illuminated (BSI) CMOS technology. The Andarta sensor represents a significant leap in the evolution of SPAD-based imaging, combining cutting-edge 3D-stacked CMOS technology with real-time data processing embedded directly on the chip.
Unlike conventional systems that record photon data and rely on external computing to process it, Andarta performs in-pixel, on-chip autocorrelation calculations using a densely parallel 128×128 macropixel architecture. This enables the device to resolve physiological signals such as blood flow dynamics — and even subtle cardiac pulsations — with lag-times under 1 microsecond.
The benefits go far beyond speed. The sensor performs 0.5 trillion operations per second while consuming just 0.3 watts of power, all within a compact footprint. It’s not just fast — it’s portable, efficient, and scalable.
This makes Andarta an enabling platform not only for biomedical monitoring but for real-time analytics in pharma, clean energy, agritech, and other domains where understanding flow at the micro level matters.
Technical info
Andarta combines a high fill-factor BSI SPAD layer — optimized for photon detection sensitivity — with a deeply integrated logic layer beneath, enabling true in-pixel processing at scale. This vertically stacked architecture allows each of the 128×128 macropixels to compute photon correlation functions in real time, eliminating the need for off-chip post-processing. The result is a low-power, high-speed sensing platform capable of resolving blood flow dynamics with sub-microsecond resolution and exceptional signal-to-noise performance.
With over 120 million transistors on-chip and throughput reaching 0.5 trillion multiply-accumulate operations per second (MAC/s) — all within a compact, 0.3 W envelope — Andarta brings data-rich, non-contact physiological measurement into a new era of portability and embedded intelligence.