Terahertz biophotonics poised to provide an alternative to conventional medical diagnostics

An interdisciplinary branch between terahertz (THz) science and biomedical engineering, THz biophotonics has shown increasing potential over the past two decades in the field of biomedicine. Chen et al. discuss THz technology in a comprehensive review.

Terahertz imaging has become an attractive diagnostic tool for diseases, pathologies, and injuries that correlate with abnormal surface tissue water content. THz waves possess favorable characteristics, including high sensitivity to water, resonance with biomolecules, favorable spatial resolution, and non-ionizing photon energy. A million times lower in energy than X-rays, THz waves are a much safer alternative.

The authors noted several aspects of THz biophotonics, including instrumentation, biological safety, data analysis, and biomedical applications. They believe covering these different aspects will aid researchers in understanding the development, achievements, challenges, and future perspectives of THz technology.

The team also discussed new issues, such as high water-absorption, low flexibility of THz systems, slow imaging speed, and the lack of methodology standards, that have emerged with the expansion of applications in THz biophotonics.

“One of the key challenges with moving THz technology to clinical applications is the need to be able to make meaningful comparisons between patients and to control or eliminate lots of variables,” said author Emma Pickwell-MacPherson.

Although these difficulties have slowed the progress from THz technology to its applications to medicine, the authors envision an increasingly shorter distance between research and clinical practice.

Source: “Terahertz (THz) biophotonics technology: Instrumentation, techniques, and biomedical applications,” by Xuequan Chen, Hannah Lindley-Hatcher, Rayko I. Stantchev, Jiarui Wang, Kaidi Li, Arturo Hernandez Serrano, Zachary D. Taylor, Enrique Castro-Camus, and Emma Pickwell-MacPherson, Chemical Physics Reviews (2022). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0068979 .