Main description:

Biomedical optical imaging is a rapidly emerging research area with widespread fundamental research and clinical applications. This book gives an overview of biomedical optical imaging with contributions from leading international research groups who have pioneered many of these techniques and applications.

A unique research field spanning the microscopic to the macroscopic, biomedical optical imaging allows both structural and functional imaging. Techniques such as confocal and multiphoton microscopy provide cellular level resolution imaging in biological systems. The integration of this technology with exogenous chromophores can selectively enhance contrast for molecular targets as well as supply functional information on processes such as nerve transduction.

Novel techniques integrate microscopy with state-of-the-art optics technology, and these include spectral imaging, two photon fluorescence correlation, nonlinear nanoscopy; optical coherence tomography techniques allow functional, dynamic, nanoscale, and cross-sectional visualization. Moving to the macroscopic scale, spectroscopic assessment and imaging methods such as fluorescence and light scattering can provide diagnostics of tissue pathology including neoplastic changes. Techniques using
light diffusion and photon migration are a means to explore processes which occur deep inside biological tissues and organs. The integration of these techniques with exogenous probes enables molecular specific sensitivity.

Contents:

Preface ; 1. Confocal Microscopy ; 2. Spectral Optical Imaging in Biology and Medicine ; 3. Multi-photon Microscopy in Neuroscience ; 4. mRNA Imaging in Living Cells for Biomedical Research ; 5. Building New Fluorescent Probes ; 6. Imaging Membrane Potential with Voltage-Sensitive Dyes ; 7. Biomedical Imaging using Optical Coherence Tomography ; 8. Two-Photon Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy ; 9. Nanoscopy: The Future of Optical Microscopy ; 10. Fluorescence Imaging in Medical Diagnostics ; 11. Light Scattering Spectroscopic Techniques for Examining Cellular Structure, Organization and Dynamics ; 12. Fluorescence and Spectroscopic Markers of Cervical Neoplasia ; 13. Quantitative Absorption and Scattering Spectra in Thick Tissues using Broadband Diffuse Optical Spectroscopy ; 14. Detection of Brain Activity by Near-Infrared Light ; 15. In-Vivo Optical Imaging of Molecular Function using NIR Fluorescent Probes