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Biophotonics
Applications of photonics-based techniques in surgery and medicine continue to increase rapidly. Some examples are:
- Photodynamic therapy (i.e. cancer therapy using light-activated drugs)
- Laser surgery (in ophthalmology, dermatology, oncology, cardiology, etc.)
- Optical biopsy (e.g. non-invasive cancer diagnostics, tissue glucose measurements and hemodynamic monitoring)
- Optical imaging (e.g. fluorescence, photoacoustic or optical coherence tomography).
These techniques hold a series of inherent advantageous properties compared to more conventional medical techniques. For instance, by applying optical techniques, treatments and diagnostic procedures can be done non-invasively, which reduces the inconvenience for the patient as well as the risk of spreading infectious diseases.
Furthermore, photonics-based medical equipment is typically relatively inexpensive and can also be made transportable, allowing for outpatient treatment and early diagnostics at first level patient care. This is of substantial importance in the South African context, specifically in terms of deployment of medical diagnostic and therapeutic equipment in remote/rural areas.
The CSIR National Laser Centre has established a generic in-house platform for preclinical testing of novel photonics based medical applications. To this end, a biological cell culture laboratory has been established and is closely integrated with adjacent optical laboratories enabling this research group to manufacture synthetic three-dimensional (3D) biological tissue models from human cell samples, which can be induced with various forms of lesions, e.g. cancer.
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