Team

Pedro Mecê
PhD, HDR

Principal Investigator
Cellular resolution retinal imaging

Principal Investigator, CLARITY Research Group
Pedro Mecê is a CNRS Research Scientist at Institut Langevin (CNRS/ESPCI Paris – PSL), and co-leader of the CLARITY Research Group. He leads research on in vivo retinal imaging using OCT-based interferometric and phase-contrast optical methods. His work lies at the interface between optical physics and biomedical imaging, with the ambition of transforming retinal imaging into a tool for probing neuronal and vascular function at cellular resolution.

He completed a CIFRE PhD in collaboration with ONERA and Quantel Medical, focusing on adaptive optics–assisted retinal laser surgery with micrometric precision. He subsequently joined Institut Langevin as a postdoctoral researcher, where he pioneered the implementation of time-domain full-field OCT for in vivo human retinal imaging. In 2022, he was appointed CNRS Research Scientist to develop new optical architectures, wavefront engineering strategies, and computational imaging approaches aimed at extracting structural and functional biomarkers from the living human retina.

His research is driven by the unique accessibility of the retina as the only optically transparent window into the central nervous system, enabling direct investigation of neuronal and vascular networks in vivo at cellular scale.

His work has been recognized by several scientific awards, including thesis prizes from the French Microscopy Society (Sfµ) and the French Society for Biological and Medical Engineering (SFGBM), as well as international distinctions from OPTICA, SPIE and ARVO. He is the recipient of the ANR JCJC BRAINS project (2023-2027) and currently leads the ERC MIRACLE-AD (2026-2031). He is co-founder of the start-up SharpEye and an active member of the Paris Eye Imaging Group, which brings together physicists and clinicians at the Quinze-Vingts National Eye Hospital.

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Olivier Thouvenin
PhD, HDR

Principal Investigator
Label-free optical microscopy

Olivier Thouvenin is Associate Professor of Optics at ESPCI Paris – PSL and co-leader of the CLARITY Research Group. His research focuses on label-free optical microscopy, quantitative imaging, and biophysical signal analysis. He develops advanced full-field optical methods and data-processing strategies to investigate dynamic biological processes without exogenous contrast agents.
He obtained a Master’s degree in Biophysics from ENS Lyon and Université Paris 7 in 2014 and completed his PhD in Optical Microscopy in 2017, during which he co-invented Dynamic Full-Field OCT (D-FFOCT). After postdoctoral work studying cerebrospinal fluid mechanics and its role in zebrafish scoliosis models, he joined ESPCI Paris as Assistant Professor, where he now leads a research group dedicated to label-free imaging and quantitative biophysics.
His contributions have been recognized internationally. In 2018, Nature identified him as one of eleven international rising stars. He received the Prix Edouard Branly in 2023 and the Prix des Innovateurs from Région Île-de-France in 2024. In 2024, he co-founded Lutèce Dynamics, a company dedicated to the dissemination of Dynamic FFOCT technologies for biology and pharmacology.

Inès Loukili
PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher
Interferometric modeling & numerical simulation

Inès is currently a postdoctoral researcher (former PhD student) in our group. Her work focuses on the theoretical and computational modeling of interferometric retinal imaging for both structural and functional applications. She develops analytical frameworks and numerical simulations to describe how spatial and temporal coherence influence image formation and performance in full-field and line-field OCT systems. Her contributions provide the quantitative foundations that guide the design and optimization of coherence-engineered approaches for in vivo retinal imaging.
She completed her engineering degree at Institut d’Optique Graduate School, including a double-degree program with KTH Royal Institute of Technology, before pursuing her PhD within the group.

Marcelina Sobczak
PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher
Adaptive optics instrumentation & retinal hemodynamics

Marcelina Sobczak is a postdoctoral researcher specializing in retinal vascular dynamics and adaptive optics imaging. She leads research activities related to the characterization of neurovascular coupling and microvascular function within the group.
She obtained her PhD in Physics from Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, where her dissertation focused on the optical properties of the human cornea. She subsequently joined the laboratory of Stephen A. Burns at Indiana University, where she developed and optimized adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (AO-SLO) systems for the study of fast vascular dynamics and small vessel responses in vivo.
At CLARITY, she is responsible for advancing vascular functional imaging using the AO-RSO platform and for integrating new optical instrumentation to enhance the precision and temporal resolution of vascular measurements. She also contributes to the multimodal integration of interferometric (FFOCT) and phase-contrast imaging approaches to investigate the spatiotemporal relationship between neuronal activation and vascular responses at cellular resolution.

Léo Puyo
PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher
Functional OCT & multimodal retinal imaging

Léo Puyo is a postdoctoral researcher specializing in functional retinal imaging using holographic and OCT-based techniques. He completed his PhD at Institut Langevin, where he developed quantitative methods for retinal and choroidal blood flow imaging using Laser Doppler Holography, with applications to vascular pulsatility and ocular hemodynamics.

He subsequently joined the group of Prof. Gereon Hüttmann at the University of Lübeck, where he worked on swept-source full-field OCT for retinal imaging, optoretinography, and retinal blood flow imaging.

At CLARITY, Léo leads the development of our Full-Field OCT platforms for probing neuronal and vascular function in the living retina. His work focuses on advancing functional retinal imaging technologies to support the study of neurovascular coupling at cellular resolution.

Anita Mouttou
PhD

Research Engineer
OCT system design & interferometric imaging

Anita Mouttou is a research engineer at CLARITY specializing in the design and integration of advanced interferometric imaging systems. She is responsible for the development of a line spectral-domain OCT platform dedicated to ultra-sensitive measurements of retinal dynamics. Her work focuses on optimizing interferometric sensitivity, system stability, and high-speed acquisition to detect subtle structural and functional variations in the living retina.

She graduated from Institut d’Optique Graduate School and completed her PhD developing resonant dielectric multilayer architectures for sensitivity enhancement in TIRF microscopy, enabling high-precision single-molecule imaging in living cells.

Olivier Martinache

PhD Student
Interferometric functional imaging & optoretinography

Olivier is a PhD candidate working on structural and functional retinal imaging using interferometric modalities. His research explores retinal dynamics through digital holography and time-domain full-field OCT, with a focus on quantifying optoretinographic responses, cellular motion, and retinal blood flow. Within the group, he leads the experimental implementation of optoretinography in the TD-FFOCT platform, including amplitude-based ORG strategies, spectral shaping, and system optimization for in vivo measurements.
He graduated from Institut d’Optique Graduate School before joining the group for his doctoral research.

Clémence Baudet

PhD student
Adaptive optics imaging & neurovascular dynamics

Clémence is a PhD candidate working on neurovascular functional imaging using adaptive optics phase-contrast imaging methods. Her research focuses on characterizing the spatiotemporal relationship between light-evoked neuronal responses and associated vascular dynamics in the living retina. She contributes to the implementation of new optical instrumentation on the AO-RSO platform to enable more precise and simultaneous measurements of neuronal activation and vascular responses.
She graduated from Institut d’Optique Graduate School before joining the group for her doctoral research.

Alejandra Superlano

PhD Student
Computer vision for retinal imaging

Alejandra is a PhD candidate specializing in data-driven analysis for retinal imaging. She graduated with an Engineering Degree in Data Science and Healthcare from IMT Atlantique, France.
Her doctoral research focuses on the development of advanced AI–based image processing pipelines for retinal imaging and cellular-scale neurovascular coupling analysis. She is responsible for implementing computational strategies to enhance image quality, extract quantitative biomarkers, and support the analysis of spatiotemporal interactions between neuronal and vascular signals.

Andrès Villalba Cortes

PhD student
Full-Field OCT & Functional Retinal Imaging

Andrès is a PhD student working on high-resolution swept-source retinal imaging and advanced volumetric reconstruction. His research focuses on developing and optimizing full-field OCT approaches for in vivo retinal imaging, with the long-term goal of measuring neural function at cellular resolution.

He studied engineering at ESPCI Paris – PSL, after obtaining a degree in Physics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Alumni

Léa Krafft
(PhD student 2019-2022)

Yao Cai
(PhD student 2020-2023)

Pierre Senée
(PhD student 2021-2024)

Ahmed Ben-Aissa
(PhD student 2021-2024)

Dimitri Roueff
(PhD student 2022-2025)

Zofia Bratasz
(Post-doctoral Researcher 2025)

Master students

João-Victor Oliveira Santos (2023), Ana Brad (2024), Lina Bellamihdi (2025), Cedric Cordoba (2025), Arthur Sureau (2025), Clovis Faure (2026), Elise Couturier (2026)

Collaborators

The CLARITY Research Group collaborates with clinicians, physicists, and engineers across academic, clinical, and industrial institutions.

Clinical collaborators:

Michel Paques
(Quinze-Vingts National Eye Hospital, Paris, France)

Kate Grieve
(Institut de la Vision, Paris, France)

Academic collaborators:

Serge Meimon
(ONERA, Palaiseau, France)

Léa Krafft
(ONERA, Palaiseau, France)

Elsa Angelini
(Télécom Paris, Palaiseau, France)

Caroline Kulcsar
(Institut d’Optique Graduate School, Palaiseau, France)

François Marquier
(ENS Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France)

Ethan Rossi
(University of Pittsburgh, USA)

Ramkumar Sabesan
(University of Washington, USA)

Industrial collaborators:

Maxime Bertrand
(SharpEye, Paris, France)

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