Biophotonics
Biophotonics can also be described as the "development and application of optical techniques, particularly imaging, to the study of biological molecules, cells and tissue".
This refers to emission, detection, absorption, reflection, modification, and creation of radiation from biomolecular, cells, tissues, organisms, and biomaterials.
Biophotonics is an interdisciplinary field involving the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and biological materials including: tissues, cells, sub-cellular structures, and molecules in living organisms.
[5] Recent biophotonics research has created new applications for clinical diagnostics and therapies involving fluids, cells, and tissues.
These advances are allowing scientists and physicians opportunities for superior, non-invasive diagnostics for vascular and blood flow, as well as tools for better examination of skin lesions.
[7][8] For example: By observing the numerous and complex interactions between light and biological materials, the field of biophotonics presents a unique set of diagnostic techniques that medical practitioners can utilize.
Furthermore, these optical imaging technologies can be used during traditional surgical procedures to determine the boundaries of lesions to ensure that the entirety of the diseased tissue is removed.
This allows for the attending surgeon to quickly visually identify boundaries between healthy and unhealthy tissue, resulting in less time on the operating table and higher patient recovery.
"Using dielectrophoretic microarray devices, nanoparticles and DNA biomarkers were rapidly isolated and concentrated onto specific microscopic locations where they were easily detected by epifluorescent microscopy".
[attribution needed][5] Optical tweezers (or traps) are scientific tools employed to maneuver microscopic particles such as atoms, DNA, bacteria, viruses, and other types of nanoparticles.
In addition, it is believed that LLLT could possibly prove to be useful in the treatment of severe brain injury or trauma, stroke, and degenerative neurological diseases.
Because the light used does not interact with tissue directly, photothermal therapy has few long term side effects and it can be used to treat cancers deep within the body.
By carefully selecting the excitation of these fluorophores and detecting the emission, FRET has become one of the most widely used techniques in the field of biophotonics, giving scientists the chance to investigate sub-cellular environments.
Biofluorescence describes the absorption of ultraviolet or visible light and the sub sequential emission of photons at a lower energy level (S_1 excited state relaxes to S_0 ground state) by intrinsically fluorescent proteins or by synthetic fluorescent molecules covalently attached to a biomarker of interest.
Biomarkers are molecules indicative or disease or distress and are a typically monitored systemically in a living organism, or by using an ex vivo tissue sample for microscopy, or in vitro: in the blood, urine, sweat, saliva, interstitial fluid, aqueous humor, or sputum.
Their unique intrinsic properties like precise wavelength selection, widest wavelength coverage, highest focusability and thus best spectral resolution, strong power densities and broad spectrum of excitation periods make them the most universal light tool for a wide spectrum of applications.
As a consequence a variety of different laser technologies from a broad number of suppliers can be found in the market today.
Major advantage of gas lasers in biophotonics is their fixed wavelength, their perfect beam quality and their low linewidth/high coherence.
Key suppliers are: Coherent, Melles Griot, Omicron, Toptica, JDSU, Newport, Oxxius, Power Technology.
As a result, the coherence length will raise into the range of several meters, whereas the linewidth will drop well below picometers (pm).
Biophotonic applications, which make use of this characteristics are Raman spectroscopy (requires linewidth below cm-1) and spectroscopic gas sensing.
Recently NKT Photonics bought Fianium,[19] remaining the major supplier of the supercontinuum technology on the market.
For more than 20 years, theoretical studies predicted multiple resonances in absorption (or transmission) spectra of biological molecules in this range.
