Biophotonics lights medicine’s path

Have you heard of biophotonics or photomedicine? If not, you’re not alone, since the discipline has a rather low profile despite its wide use in oncology, dermatology, ophthalmology, surgery and cardiology.

Light is at the heart of biophotonics. Biophotonics is the convergence of biology and photonics – science and technology focused on generating, manipulating and detecting photons, which are the quantum units of light. Biophotonics employs applying a  light source, such as a microscope light, a laser or radiation, to a tissue or cell.

One simple application of biophotonics you’ve probably seen is a light-emitting device,  called a pulse oximeter, which is placed on a finger to ascertain a person’s arterial oxygen saturation and cardiac rhythm.

Pulse oximeter/Wikipedia

Science has demonstrated that light can also be used to prevent and cure illness. "We are often surrounded by this science without knowing it," says Professor Romain Quidant, head of the Plasmon Nano-Optics Group at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, Spain.

"What happens if you put your hand against a windowpane on a sunny day?” asks Turgut Durduran, a biophotonics researcher in Castelldefels, Catalonia. “The light appears to be white and your hand, red. This is the principle of the field in which I'm working: light through tissue."

The field evolved out of a practice from the 1930s that used light to document breast cancer. In those days, a doctor would stand in front of a breast cancer patient. A light would be placed behind the patient's breast and the doctor would draw would he saw. “Today, 80 years later, in a way, we're still studying that," Quidant says.

Currently, the medical fields of dermatology, ophthalmology, surgery, neurology, cardiology and oncology are making the greatest advances in biophotonics.

Quidant’s research is supported of the Cellex Foundation in Barcelona.