Optical Clearing of Tissues: Benefits for Biology, Medical Diagnostics, and Phototherapy

Genina, Elina A.; Bashkatov, Alexey N.; Sinichkin, Yuri P.; Yanina, Irina Yu.; Tuchin, Valery V.

doi:10.1117/3.2219608.ch10

Book: Handbook of Optical Biomedical Diagnostics, Second Edition, Volume 2: Methods

Editor(s): Valery V. Tuchin

Author(s): Elina Genina, Alexey Bashkatov, Yuri Sinichkin, Irina Yanina, Valery Tuchin

Published: 2016

https://doi.org/10.1117/3.2219608.ch10

Abstract

During the last 25 years, interest in the development and application of optical methods for clinical functional imaging of physiological conditions has been centered around diagnostics and therapy of cancer and other diseases and is growing tremendously. It is initiated by the unique information, relative simplicity, safety, and sufficiently low cost of optical instruments, as compared, e.g., to x-ray computer tomography or magnetic resonance tomography (MRT). However, the main limitation of optical diagnostic methods, including optical diffusion tomography, optical coherence tomography (OCT), confocal microscopy, reflection spectroscopy, etc., is the strong scattering of light in tissues and blood that significantly reduces the contrast, spatial resolution, and probing depth.