An Introduction to Biomedical Photonics: Shining Light on Diagnosis

Why do our fingertips glow red when we shine a light through our hand?This book unravels such everyday optical mysteries and introduces healthcare technologies based on these very phenomena — technologies that "examine" the body and "explore" the human mind using light.Among the most successful applications are pulse oximetry and optical coherence tomography (OCT). In contrast, noninvasive blood glucose monitoring remains an unsolved challenge despite decades of research. This book delves into the scientific reasons why this goal has proven so elusive. It also introduces a variety of medical devices and healthcare technologies such as the pulse oximetry, OCT, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), optical CT, fluorescence imaging, blood flow imaging and photoacoustic imaging that use light to examine the body and explore the mind.