Chapter 1
Overview of Biophotonics
Abstract Biophotonics or biomedical optics has become an indispensible tool for
basic life sciences research and for biomedical diagnosis, therapy, monitoring,
imaging, and surgery. This chapterfirst describes what biophotonics is and what its
benefits and applications are. Then some basic concepts of light and of light-tissue
interactions are described, including what specific lightwave windows are needed to
carry out biophotonics processes. Thefinal section gives a brief tutorial of bio-
logical cell and molecular structures, cellular and molecular functions, and the
vocabulary used to describe these structures and functions. This topic is essential
for understanding the biophotonics tools and light-tissue interaction processes
described in this book.
Throughout the history of the world, humans have always been fascinated by the
power and importance of light. This fascination appears in religious writings and
rituals, in art and literary works ranging from ancient to modern, in lights for
buildings and vehicles, in a wide variety of displays for computing and communi-
cation devices, and in the dramatic visualization effects of cinematography and other
entertainment settings. Analogous to the use of electrons in the electronics world,
photons are the key enabling entities in the world of light-based technology or
photonics.Photonicsis the discipline that involves the generation, detection, and
control of photons for enabling functions such as transferring or processing infor-
mation, sensing or measuring changes in physical parameters, and physically
modifying material characteristics. The applications of photonics are found in almost
every technical discipline including illumination, imaging, manufacturing, material
processing, telecommunications, data storage, displays, photography, forensics,
power generation, bar codes, and quick response (QR) codes for smart phones.
Photonics technology also has become an indispensible tool for basic life sci-
ences research and for biomedical diagnosis, therapy, monitoring, imaging, and
surgery. This category of photonics deals with the interaction between light and
biological material and is referred to asbiophotonicsorbiomedical optics.As
indicated in Fig.1.1, the resulting reflection, absorption,fluorescence, and scat-
tering manifestations of this interaction can be used to analyze the characteristics of
©Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016
G. Keiser,Biophotonics, Graduate Texts in Physics,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0945-7_
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