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Dr. Declan O'Loughlin

Assistant Professor (Electronic & Elect. Engineering)
ARAS AN PHIARSAIGH
      
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Dr. Declan O'Loughlin

Assistant Professor (Electronic & Elect. Engineering)
ARAS AN PHIARSAIGH

 d.oloughlin@tcd.ie

 3531896 3804


Declan O'Loughlin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and a Principal Investigator in the Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Ireland. He received the BE and PhD degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland in 2014 and 2018 respectively, where his doctoral research focused on investigating the performance of radar-based breast imaging in diverse patient populations. Prior to joining Trinity, Dr O'Loughlin was an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow co-funded by Microwave Vision SA, France and an Adjunct Lecturer at NUI Galway, Ireland working on imaging algorithm development for the novel breast imaging system Wavelia®. His research interests are the use of electronics and electromagnetics for medical device applications. Dr O'Loughlin is a member of Young Academy Ireland ('23) and has received a number of national and international awards including the Irish Research Council (IRC) New Foundations Award, the Irish-Canada University Foundation (ICUF) James M. Flaherty Scholarship and the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist Award. He is a Member of Engineers Ireland, a Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a Senior Member of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI).
  AMBULATORY DEVICES   Bioengineering   Computer Engineering   Electronic Engineering, circuit design   ENGINEERING   Medical Devices Engineering
Project Title
 Optimising the design of microwave hydration monitoring devices
From
2023
To
2027
Summary
This project examines the theoretical foundation for active microwave measurement for hydration status assessment. These devices estimate the electrical properties of the arm which are known to vary with hydration status. While several studies have shown promising results in monitoring dehydration during exercise, results have been based on small studies with limited data and relied on a number of simplifying assumptions regarding the equipment and analysis tools used. The underlying principles are comprehensively examined drawing on the existing evidence and recent literature regarding the natural variability of the electrical properties for reasons other than hydration and the impact of the equipment used to gather the data. These results help determine the minimum standards required to measure and isolate the changes in electrical properties due to hydration alone and the fundamental limitations of the technique.
Funding Agency
Trinity College Dublin
Programme
Provost Doctorate Awards
Project Type
Research

Details Date
Visiting Lecturer, Research Institute for Nanodevices, Hiroshima University, Japan. 2022
Inaugural member, ORCID Research Advisory Council
Accreditation Panel Rapporteur, Engineers Ireland
Executive Committee Member of Young Academy Ireland
Guest Associate Editor of IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine
Reviewer for IEEE TMI, TBME, TMTT, JERM and Medical Physics.
Language Skill Reading Skill Writing Skill Speaking
English Fluent Fluent Fluent
German Medium Medium Medium
Irish Fluent Fluent Fluent
Irish Sign Language Basic Basic Basic
Details Date From Date To
Young Academy Ireland 2023 2027
Engineers Ireland, Member 2014
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Member and Student Branch Counselor 2015
International Union of Radio Science (URSI), Senior Member 2019
Royal Academy of Medicine Ireland, Member 2020
Stacey Torres and Declan O'Loughlin, Clutter-based metrics for radar-based breast imaging: clutter region selection, 2026 International Conference on Medical Microwave Imaging Applications (ICMWIA), Lisbon, Portugal, January 2026, 2026, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
Xiaoru Liu and Declan O'Loughlin, Understanding the Performance of Microwave Hydration Assessment with Layered Planar Models, 19th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP'25), Stockholm, Sweden, April 2023, 2025, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
Declan O'Loughlin, Developments in Open-Source Tools for Microwave Breast Imaging, 2024 18th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), Glasgow, Scotland, the UK, March 2024, 2024, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
Hang Song, Shinsuke Sasada, Takayuki Kadoya, Koji Arihiro, Morihito Okada, Xia Xiao, Tomomi Ishikawa, Declan O'Loughlin, Jun-ichi Takada and Takamaro Kikkawa, Cross-Correlation of Confocal Images for Excised Breast Tissues of Total Mastectomy, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 71, (5), 2024, p1705 - 1716, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
Silva, Nuno P. and Elahi, Adnan and O'Halloran, Martin and O'Keeffe, Derek T. and O'Loughlin, Declan, Design limitations of using magnetic inductive coupling to verify nasogastric tube placement, 17th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation, Florence, Italy, 26-31 March 2023, 2023, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
Marcin J Krasny, Hamza Benchakroun, Niko Ištuk, Declan O'Loughlin, Adnan Elahi, Atif Shahzad, Martin O'Halloran and Eoghan Dunne, Simple Steps to Characterise a Conductivity Measurement Probe for Bio-impedance Applications, 23rd International Conference on Biomedical Applications of Electrical Impedance Tomography, Aachen, Germany, June 2023, 2023, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
Fearghal Morgan, László Bakó, Declan O'Loughlin, Roshan George, Arthur Beretta, Frédéric Rousseau, Ian Gallivan, Niall Timlin-Canning, Abishek Bupathi, John Patrick Byrne and Frank Callaly, Vicilogic: Linking Online Learning, Assessment and Prototyping with Remote FPGA Hardware, International Conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation, Thessaloniki, Greece, March 2023, 2023, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
Emily Porter and Declan O'Loughlin, Challenges to Demonstrating Efficacy When Translating Microwave Diagnostic Devices, 2023 IEEE Conference on Antenna Measurements and Applications (CAMA), Genoa, Italy, November 2023, 2023, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
Fearghal Morgan, John Patrick Byrne, Abishek Bupathi, Roshan George, Adnan Elahi, Frank Callaly, Seán Kelly and Declan O'Loughlin, HDLGen-ChatGPT Case Study: RISC-V Processor VHDL and Verilog Model-Testbench and EDA Project Generation, International Workshop on Rapid System Prototyping, Hamburg, Germany, September 2023, 2023, pp11 , Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
Hamza Benchakroun and Declan O'Loughlin, Identifying Microwave Antenna Design Limitations for Radar-based Breast Imaging, 2022 International Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT), Dublin, Ireland, 16/5/2022, 2022, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
  

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Declan O'Loughlin, Clinical advances and remaining challenges for microwave breast imaging, Annual Meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiologists, Seattle, WA, USA, April, 2020, Society of Interventional Radiologists, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Declan O'Loughlin, Improving the sensitivity of radar-based breast imaging algorithms in diverse patient populations, National University of Ireland Galway, 2019, Thesis, PUBLISHED
Declan O'Loughlin, Remaining Technical Challenges for Microwave Breast Imaging, International Symposium on Biomedical Engineering, Hiroshima, Japan, November, 2018, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Declan O'Loughlin, Image processing on a Field Programmable Gate Array using High-Level Synthesis, National University of Ireland Galway, 2014, Thesis, PUBLISHED

  


Award Date
Royal Irish Academy Charlemont Grant 2023
Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship 2020
International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist Award 2020
Irish Research Council (IRC) New Foundations Award 2019
Irish Canada University Foundation (ICUF) James M. Flaherty Research Scholarship 2017
BioEngineering in Ireland (BINI) Best Electronics Speaker 2016
Declan O'Loughlin's research interests centre around the use of electronics and electromagnetics for biomedical applications. In particular, his research interests include identifying and accounting for variances between patients in bioelectronic medical devices, such as variances between the dielectric properties of tissues of interest and in the size and shape of targets of interest.