Over the past 13 years, two longtime friends and a small team based in Rocky Hill have broken their way into the global energy sector, developing acoustic and fiber-optic sensors and software that have enabled more efficient production in mile-deep oil and gas wells as well as improved monitoring of electric grid cables.

Now Trevor MacDougall and Paul E. Sanders — serial entrepreneurs who have founded two companies and successfully sold one to a Canadian energy firm in 2012 for a hefty but undisclosed sum — are pivoting their fiber-optic sensor technology platform to improve a lung cancer treatment called photodynamic therapy, or PDT. Their latest company, Lumeda — backed by an initial $1-million investment from Connecticut Innovations and Branfordbased Cycle Venture Partners — is hoping to get U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval within the next two years for an optical device that automates the targeting and dosage of laser light to the site of a newly removed thoracic tumor.