BABYLUX: the light that brightens the lives of premature babies

The Babylux project comes to an end with promosing results on diffuse optics monitoring of oxygenation levels and cerebral blood flow in premature babies.

In January 2014 – ICFO and ICFO spin-off Hemophotonics joined together with seven other European partners from Spain, Italy, Germany and Denmark to start the BabyLux project. The goal of this project, which now draws to a close, was to develop a monitoring tool that would help reduce the risk of brain lesions in extremely preterm babies and eventually decrease the number of children with disabilities by monitoring, with a high level of accuracy, the clinical parameters affecting the cerebral status of preterm babies and eventually providing the necessary information for accurate treatments.

According to the last Global Action Report published by The World Health Organization, there are more than 13 million preterm births every year and the number continues to rise.Extremely preterm infants (born at less than 28 weeks of gestation) represent 0.5% of all births which, when translated into numbers, is equivalent to more than 25,000 cases per year in Europe.