Optical fibers for biomedical photonics applications

Recent advances in photonics technology have generated extensive interests its application to basic life sciences research, to healthcare instruments, and to biomedical diagnosis, therapy, and imaging. Optical fibers play a key role in these applications owing to their unique physical and light-transmission properties. These properties enable fibers to resolve challenging issues such as collecting and transmitting low-level fluorescent light signals, delivering a wide range of optical power over a broad spectrum to a specific tissue area, and carrying out minimally invasive medical procedures. This talk addresses various fiber structures, materials, and spectral responses, and describes some biomedical applications.