Advances in optics for biotechnology, medicine and surgery.

The editors introduce the Biomedical Optics Express feature issue, "Advances in Optics for Biotechnology, Medicine and Surgery," which includes 12 contributions from attendees of the 2011 conference Advances in Optics for Biotechnology, Medicine and Surgery XII.

This feature issue represents topics covered at the 2011 Advances in Optics for Biotechnology, Medicine and Surgery XII conference in Naples, Florida, June 5–8, 2011. This was the 12th in a series of biennial meetings organized by Engineering Conferences International over the past 20 years. The editors of this feature issue were organizing chairs and co-chairs of the meeting, and submissions were considered from researchers who attended the meeting.

The cross section of papers within this feature issue demonstrates the great diversity of biophotonic techniques, while highlighting the continuing progress of our field towards providing true clinical value. Papers include new instrumentation approaches to clinical and intrasurgical imaging, including Clancy et al. [1], who present a new method to render three-dimensional surfaces during endoscopy using spectral encoding, and Solomon et al. [2], who present a system for high-speed diffuse optical tomography for sentinel lymph node resection. Larson et al. [3] present evaluation of a confocal microscope system for in vivo imaging of human skin and oral mucosa.

Novel microscopy development continues to be an important part of biomedical optics, providing tools for both basic research and clinical diagnostics. In this issue, Singh et al. [4] present an approach to improving the performance of structured light microscopy, while Sridharan et al. [5] demonstrate the potential of spatial light interference microscopy (SLIM) to allow simultaneous evaluation of the motility and growth of cells for developmental biology research. Lee et al. [6] highlight the great potential that optical techniques have for impact in the developing world, with a high-performance, inexpensive, and portable microscope for examination of biological specimens. Lim et al. [7] demonstrate a model of light scattering that could enable simple light scattering-based hematological analysis.

The conference highlighted the continued importance of optics for therapeutic applications, as represented by the work of Gualda et al. [8], who utilized two-photon microscopy to explore intrastromal ablation of the cornea, work very relevant to understanding and improving laser eye surgery.

Advances in multimodal photoacoustic methods are presented in Rousseau et al. [9], who combine photoacoustics ultrasonography. Tichauer et al. [10] demonstrate an approach for x-ray guided fluorescence tomography for small animal molecular imaging.

The continued importance of both quantitative image analysis and mathematical model development is also highlighted. Garcia-Allende et al. [11] use morphological analysis of optical coherence tomography (OCT) images for computer aided diagnosis of gastrointestinal tissues, and Gamm et al. [12], developed a model for estimation of absorption and scattering properties from fiber-optic based diffuse reflectance measurements.