Classical and Quantum Biophotonics, Part 9 - laboratory assays, SPM and near field imaging and microscopy (original) (raw)

Biophotonics is a field on the border of biology and photonics. It is a research and application area covering phenomena and processes, substances, objects in the size scale from nanometers to macro, such as viruses, molecules, organelles, cells, bacteria, membranes, tissues, small and larger organisms, in terms of their photonic properties. Biophotonics includes research and standardized clinical and general-purpose laboratory instrumentation. An active direction in the development of biophotonics is its quantum branch, where processes that occur at the nanoscale are studied. The interest in these nanoprocesses, either containing a photonic phenomenon or studied with photonic methods, stems from the fact that they often constitute the foundation of processes that occur and are later reflected in the macroscale of the entire biological object. The series of articles on biophotonics is an abbreviation of a lecture delivered by the author at the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology of the Warsaw University of Technology for PhD students. This part of the series deals with the issues of near field and SPM bio-imaging. The previous parts concerned research areas and correlations of biophotonics with related disciplines, biophotonic processes, photo-biosubstances, objects, spectroscopy, biophotonic laboratory assays and techniques.