Tyndall National Institute, is pleased to announce the participation of its researchers in a newly started Horizon Europe project which was recently awarded within the framework of the EIC (European Innovation Council) Pathfinder Open instrument. The INTEGRAL project “Integrated Photonics for Signal Processing and Lasers Towards The Next Generation Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)” unites some of the world’s leading researchers and companies in simulation, fabrication, packaging and charactericisation of SiN Photonic Integrated Circuits in a risky and highly interdisciplinary research project with the ambition of founding a new paradigm of medical imaging.
Currently, while OCT has become an essential diagnostic tool, its speed, cost, and system complexity hinder its widespread application and limit its full potential. INTEGRAL aims to address these challenges by merging signal generation and signal processing into a synergistic photonic engine that breaks through existing limits in speed, resolution, parallel computing and system complexity.
INTEGRAL will enable widespread OCT adoption not just in clinics, but also in general practices, pharmacies, and even homes—supporting accessible health monitoring. This lays a strong foundation for post-project commercial exploitation and TRL scaling, establishing a sovereign EU supply chain and leadership in a high-value, fast-growing global market which was valued at €1.26 billion in 2025, reaching € 2.85 billion by 2032.
Tyndall lead for Integral, Dr Tomasz Piwonski stated that “I am very excited at our involvement in this innovative project with the other partners as we strive to open new horizons in next generation OCT for implementation in e.g. ophthalmology, dermatology, cardiology and other surgical application areas” Also participating are Drs Samir Ghosh and Brendan Roycroft from Tyndall’s Advanced Packaging and III-V Materials and Devices Groups repectively.
Welcoming the news, Martin O’Connell, EU Programmes Manager in Tyndall commented “I would like to congratulate Drs Piwonski, Roycroft and Ghosh on their success in this most competitive instrument of Horizon Europe. In 2025 only 44 high risk/high gain projects out of 2087 submissions were selected for funding so the award of INTEGRAL is testament to the extremely high quality of both the concept and submission by the consortium and am looking forward to hearing of the future solutions”
The Integral project has received 3M€ in funding and runs from March 2026 to Feb 2029. Integral is coordinated by Munster Technological University (IE) with other partners comprising of University of Kent (UK) and CentreVue SpA (It)
Integral is a project funded by Horizon Europe the European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under grant agreement no. 101258419
