The Leibniz Center for Photonics in Infection Research (LPI) is an open-access translational research infrastructure funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) within the framework of the National Roadmap for Research Infrastructures, with a total budget of approximately €182 million.

The LPI structures its services along a diagnostic and therapeutic pipeline. It integrates development, testing, and transfer in a way that provides projects from academia and industry with clearly defined handover points and reliable processes. In doing so, the LPI supports the translation of light-based methods for diagnosis, monitoring, and therapy of infectious diseases into application-oriented solutions.

Subproject BT-5 within the LPI project focuses on the rapid and robust detection of molecular binding events via plasmonic resonance shifts. Molecular binding assays using functionalized nanoparticles enable short reaction times, low sample volumes, and large effective reaction surfaces. Marker-free evaluation based on plasmon resonance shifts, however, ideally requires hyperspectral imaging, in which a complete spectrum is recorded for each image pixel.Conventional hyperspectral techniques are typically based on scanning approaches—spatial, spectral, or interferometric—and are therefore time-consuming and susceptible to drift artifacts. At the Leibniz-IPHT, a non-scanning hyperspectral imaging system has been developed that is based on a microlens architecture following the TIGER principle and enables the acquisition of a full spectrum per image pixel in a single exposure.

This approach is particularly well suited for detecting very small plasmonic resonance shifts.The objective of this work package is to adapt this system specifically to the requirements of plasmon resonance measurements and to evaluate it for molecular binding assays. It is expected that even very small, particle-specific resonance shifts can be detected reliably. This would enable spatially resolved mapping of plasmon resonance shifts, providing insights into bacterial and host-cell secretion processes with high molecular specificity through the selection of appropriate capture molecules.