Biomedical optics has been increasingly applied to the screening, surveillance and diagnosis of diseases, as well as the non-invasive monitoring of physiological status of tissue/organs in vivo. The interaction between light and biological tissue involves mainly scattering and absorption, which can be modeled analytically with the framework of radiative transport equation or numerically with the Monte Carlo method. With sufficient understanding and appropriate modeling of light-tissue interactions, the clinically relevant and useful information can be extracted from optical signals measured from tissue. The following techniques will be reviewed:
1. Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy
2. Fluorescence spectroscopy
3. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy and tomography
4. Single(few) scattering spectroscopy
5. Raman scattering spectroscopy
Other optical techniques related to non-invasive diagnosis will be reviewed by the students (topics chosen by the students). Techniques that use only ballistic photons to provide signals (e.g. confocal microscopy and non-linear microscopy) are not reviewed in this course.