Shabahang Soroush, Kim Seonghoon, Yun Seok-Hyun
Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Dermatology, Harvard Medical School. 65 Landsdowne Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Adv Funct Mater. 2018 Jun 13;28(24). doi: 10.1002/adfm.201706635. Epub 2018 Apr 14.
Optical techniques used in medical diagnosis, surgery, and therapy require efficient and flexible delivery of light from light sources to target tissues. While this need is currently fulfilled by glass and plastic optical fibers, recent emergence of biointegrated approaches, such as optogenetics and implanted devices, call for novel waveguides with certain biophysical and biocompatible properties and desirable shapes beyond what the conventional optical fibers can offer. To this end, exploratory efforts have begun to harness various transparent biomaterials to develop waveguides that can serve existing applications better and enable new applications in future photomedicine. Here, we review the recent progress in this new area of research for developing biomaterial-based optical waveguides. We begin with a survey of biological light-guiding structures found in plants and animals, a source of inspiration for biomaterial photonics engineering. We describe natural and synthetic polymers and hydrogels that offer appropriate optical properties, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and mechanical flexibility have been exploited for light-guiding applications. Finally, we briefly discuss perspectives on biomedical applications that may benefit from the unique properties and functionalities of light-guiding biomaterials.
医学诊断、手术和治疗中使用的光学技术需要将光源发出的光高效且灵活地传输到目标组织。虽然目前玻璃和塑料光纤满足了这一需求，但最近出现的生物集成方法，如光遗传学和植入式设备，要求具备某些生物物理和生物相容性特性以及超出传统光纤所能提供的理想形状的新型波导。为此，人们已开始进行探索性研究，利用各种透明生物材料来开发波导，以更好地服务现有应用并在未来光医学中实现新应用。在此，我们综述了在基于生物材料的光波导这一研究新领域的最新进展。我们首先概述植物和动物中发现的生物导光结构，这是生物材料光子学工程的灵感来源。我们描述了具有适当光学特性、生物相容性、生物可降解性和机械柔韧性的天然和合成聚合物及水凝胶已被用于导光应用。最后，我们简要讨论了可能受益于导光生物材料独特特性和功能的生物医学应用前景。
