Biomedical Optics

Catalog description

The field of biophotonics is a rapidly-expanding re-search area in which the interactions of photons with matter are leveraged to increase our understanding of biology and to improve the outcomes in human medicine. The objectives of this course are to familiarize students with the fundamental interactions between light and biological samples, and how these are implemented in an array of technologies that are finding successful application in biomedical research and clinical application. Topics will include fundamentals of photon transport in turbid media; optical spectroscopy variants (reflectance, fluorescence, Raman; steady-state and time-resolved); diffuse optical imaging; biological microscopy; coherence techniques; hybrid technologies (e.g. photo-acoustic imaging); and optical molecular imaging. Special attention will be paid to quantitative methods for spectroscopy and imaging in solid tissues. The class will be composed of lectures, and interactive discussions on recent papers representing the state of the art in the field.