France 2030 - IDEC Project

The resulting IDEC platform contains five built-in instruments which exploit the hybridation between digital science and instrumentation to answer today’s needs in imaging and detection, for use in interdisciplinary fields from biology to astrophysics. Research and innovation in optical and microwave imaging or materials characterization face common challenges with low signal to noise conditions, high speed measurements conditions, as well as issues in information reconstruction due to inevitable limitation in the amount of data available. The IDEC instruments will answer these challenges by bringing together algorithmic and applied mathematical developments including artificial intelligence, within imaging and detection systems. We will bring our most mature approaches to the level of an open platform internationally recognized, where practical applications in imaging and detection can be solved thanks to this hybridation.

The sustainability of IDEC will be based on these different schemes and is expected to create engineer positions that will be operational for the running of the platform. This project is part of key strategical research and innovation directions at different levels : at the local level, through the Excellence Initiative A*midex initiated by Aix Marseille Université, in particular within the newly created institutes (Marseille Imaging and Archimède among others) and through training in research in existing masters (Europhotonics,TSI) and doctorate programs (Physics and Science de la Matière); at the national level, through national strategy directions such as defined by Agence Nationale de la Recherche in health, material sciences and numerical tools including artificial intelligence ; at the European scale, where photonics and advanced materials are part of the key enabling technologies that are considered to strengthen Europe's industrial capacities.

Collaborators and users of IDEC are from a highly interdisciplinary context, covering biology, biomedical sciences, environment, material sciences, astrophysics, spatial explorations and industrial applications such as pharmaceutical, cosmetics and utilitary networks detection. Development and running of the equipment will be done at Institut Fresnel, following the model of existing platforms.

IDEC will involve 13 researchers and 8 engineers from Institut Fresnel during the two first years of implementation, during which both numerical and instrumentation developments will be operated in a concerted way with complementary expertises. For the three next years of running, 6 researchers and 4 engineers will be involved for maintenance, co-development and access to users and collaborators.

During these phases and after, IDEC will be an ideal environment to train Master, PhD students and postdoctorates in connection to local training programs in photonics (Europhotonics master) and Signal and Image Processing (TSI master). The instruments will be open to both academic (laboratories) and non-academic sectors (industry, large instruments, large organizations), involved through co-funded collaborative projects, co-development projects governed by well defined IP rules including technological transfers and startup creations, as well as use by pricing following the system already in place in other Institut Fresnel platforms.