The Department of Electronic and Photonic Metrology was founded on the belief that the greater effort we dedicate to understanding, the deeper our awareness of our subjectivity becomes.
The Department is a place and a community devoted to truth, both discovered and shared, where scholars and students, professors and learners come together, united by the pursuit of educating the young and enriching the cultural heritage of humanity.Wrocław, March 1998
Prof. Janusz Mroczka
Department of Electronic and Photonic Metrology
Metrology, in its continuous development, uncovers ever-new cognitive challenges, revealing new measurement problems to be solved. This drives the advancement of increasingly sophisticated measurement tools that utilize the achievements of modern technology. New cognitive challenges and their practical tools of exploration give rise to new directions in metrology. In addition to the traditional fields of metrology, such as theoretical foundations of metrology, standards, measurement methods, data processing, measurement uncertainty assessment, measurement system technology, and others, new areas have emerged. Among them are optical metrology, photonic metrology, nanometrology, biomedical metrology, and more.
In the cognitive process, metrology employs analysis and synthesis in the realm of abstraction, within areas of reality represented by physical and mathematical models. It is precisely within these models that we can easily observe examples of formal analogies between different phenomena on the side of observation, and similarities on the side of conceptual synthesis.
This way of thinking became one of the reasons for establishing the Department of Electronic and Photonic Metrology at Wrocław University of Science and Technology. The foundation of the Department’s activities lies in the modeling of physical phenomena that can be described using the concepts of matter, energy (entropy), time, and information (negentropy).
The primary goal of the Department’s work is to transform physical models—constructed from the concepts of matter, energy, and time—into mathematical models, and subsequently into metrological models. These, when supplemented with the concept of information, provide both qualitative and quantitative insights.
The basic operational framework of the Department corresponds to the cognitive process, which is represented by a sequential connection of the studied object (as the subject of investigation) with its physical, mathematical, and metrological models. Between these models, feedback loops exist, reflecting the verification processes of individual models, conditioned by external evaluation criteria.
The main tasks of the Department are:
- Educating students and cultivating their interest in metrology through the “Electronic Equipment” specialization at the Faculty of Electronics, Photonics, and Microsystems, Wrocław University of Science and Technology;
- Preparing educational resources, such as scripts, textbooks, and laboratory setups, to support learning;
- Conducting scientific research in metrology and encouraging collaboration with other universities and research institutions;
- Partnering with national metrological services to implement scientific achievements and share knowledge from domestic and international centers, while exploring the future of metrology in various industries;
- Building international collaboration by participating in joint doctoral programs, research grants, and organizing international conferences.
The scientific activities of the Department include:
- Methodology of observation and experimentation;
- Algorithmization of the inverse problem;
- Mathematical modeling of physical fields and their practical implementation using optical and impedance tomography methods;
- Comprehensive modeling of dynamic technical and biomedical objects, considering both lumped and distributed parameters;
- Spectral and polarization analysis of scattered radiation in dispersion systems and their practical application in assessing the properties of composite materials;
- Optical imaging methods and measurement data processing in three-dimensional space, as well as their fusion for lossless image encoding;
- Multisensor data fusion with varying spatial resolution using deterministic and stochastic processing methods for high-quality reconstruction;
- Use of time-frequency representation for measurement data processing and its practical implementation with signal processors;
- Parametric identification methods for static and dynamic models of complex objects, with practical applications in measuring the properties of the human respiratory and circulatory systems;
- Application of artificial intelligence methods to extract quantitative and qualitative information from measurement data;
- Design, development, and optimization of computer-based measurement and information systems for scientific research and technological processes;
- Design and fabrication of intelligent measuring instruments using microprocessor technology;
- Development of telemedicine systems integrated with smart home solutions to monitor the safety and health of residents.
The Department collaborates with the following international institutions:
- Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, Rouen, CNRS Unit 6614 DS10, France;
- Department of Engineering and Product Design, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom;
- Institut Universitaire des Systèmes Thermiques Industriels, Marseille, UMR CNRS 6595, France;
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, USA;
- Biomedical Physics Laboratory, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium;
- Auckland Bioengineering Institute, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Additionally, the Department maintains scientific contacts with:
- Centre for Modelling and Information in Medicine, City University, London, United Kingdom;
- Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informatica, University of Padova, Padua, Italy;
- Royal Brompton National Heart and Lung Hospital, London, United Kingdom;
- Physiologie Respiratoire et Sportive, Hôpital Charles Nicolle, Rouen, France.
The Department’s research has been conducted as part of 24 grants, including 9 individual grants, 8 doctoral grants, 2 targeted grants, 1 development grant, and 4 international grants (Polonium program). The results of these studies have been presented in 332 publications, including 49 articles published in world-class journals from the Philadelphia List. Since the establishment of the Department in 1998, 12 employees have obtained a doctoral degree (including 3 co-tutelle), and 2 have earned a habilitation degree.
The theoretical and empirical efforts we undertake together in the Department help us build the conviction that, through successive approximations of partial truths, we come closer to that unattainable Absolute Truth that Nature conceals from us. In this continuous dialogue with Nature, we strive to improve ourselves and our students and doctoral candidates, reinforcing our belief that this path will never lead us to scientific defeatism. We firmly believe that the academic degrees we earn define the scope of our competence in action and our position in the pursuit of knowledge. They open doors to a community for whom science is both a privilege and a duty. They remind us that we have acquired the ability to perceive truth as one of the sources of our individuality.
