ASIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS

 Guest Editorial

This special issue of Asian Journal of Physics is devoted to the recent achievements in the field of statistical optics with application to biomedical diagnostics. Recent decades, this branch of optics was developing very intensive.

This issue is exclusively focused on biospeckle dynamics, Doppler measurements, laser Doppler flowmetry, speckle microscopy, speckle-imaging techniques, specklesinphysiological optics, optical coherence tomography, optical. Doppler tomography, photonmigration in biotissues, image processing, light scattering within the dispersive biological media, diffusive optical imaging, light propagation in biological tissue, speckle photography, and laser-tissue interaction. Broadly speaking all aspects of speckle with application in medicine and biology is covered.

In particular, paper written by Alexey Bashkatov, et al. describes optical clearing of human skin and blood microcirculation controlled by administration of glucose solution. Laser Doppler flowmetry has been used for study of skin blood microcirculation under the action of the glucose solution. Results of the experiments demonstrated that at the action of the glucose solution blood perfusion and blood concentration increase, however the mean blood velocity does not change.

Paper by Ravi Manapuram et al. presents new approach to personal identification of fingerprints using optical coherence tomography. It is demonstrated that OCT could be a powerful tool for accurate and sensitive identification of the fingerprint gummies made from different materials.

Seria of papers of Oleg Angelsky et al is devoted to the questions of polarization correlometry of speckle-images, formed as a result of light scattering from biological tissue.

Polarization coordinate mapping, analysis of first-fourth orders statistics of biological tissues polarization azimuth and ellipticities, statistics of the complex degree of mutual polarization of biospeckle images and diagnostical possibilities of polarization-correlometry of speckle-images are the subjects of these papers.

New technique for characterization of glucose effect in biological tissue is discussed in the paper by Andrey Bednov and Alexander Oraevsky. Time-resolved optoacoustic method of monitoring the absorbed laser energy distribution in tissues was employed to measure changes in glucose concentration in phantoms and tissue in vitro.

            Dan Zhu and co-workers have suggested new system for monitoring of dynamic blood perfusion. Dynamic blood flow rate was measured with laser speckle microscopy by using techniques of zero-crossings. The developed method is expected to become a very useful for non-contacting and non-disturbing real-time monitoring of changes in the statement of blood microcirculation.

Paper of Gleb Mareew and co-workers describes new approaches to the objective diagnosis of chronic tonsillitis by laser Doppler flowmetry. Techniques, which are traditionally used by medical doctors, are painful and tonsil-destructive operation. LDF is free from these disadvantages. In this paper it is shown that the degree of sclerosis in tonsillar tissue affects the blood flow in tonsils.

In the paper of Vladimir F. Lukyanov, laser Doppler flowmetry is considered as method for diagnostics of microvascular resistance at hypertension. LDF was used to measure vasomotion and blood flow after arterial compression, decompression and venous hyperemia.

Peculiarities of speckle dynamics induced by lecithin-water sol-gel transition are studied in the paper of Alexander Vladimirov and co-authors. Designing the measuring equipment and developing the procedure for the analysis of the time dependent microscopic phenomena in biological systems are the purposes of this research.

Biochemical, biophysical and optical aspects of interaction of low-coherent light with bacterial cells have been investigated in the paper of Onega Ulianova and co-authors. Dynamic low-coherent speckles have been used for photoinactivation of bacteria, caused very dangerous disease, such as tularemia. Perspectives to the development of a principally new type of prophylactic medicine (including the vaccines against the extremely dangerous infections) based on the cellular suspensions treated with the dynamic speckle-fields are discussed.

Editor believes that in spite of a small collection of papers presented in this special issue this collection reflects the major directions of modern speckle optics for biology and medicine and will be useful for students and engineers involved in biomedical optics design and applications.

I wish to thank Professor Vinod Rastogi, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Journal of Physics for giving me the opportunity to edit this special issue ofAJP.

Special Issue Guest Editor

Sergey S. Ulyanov,

Professor of Department of Optics and Biomedical Physics,

Saratov State University, Russia,

Chief of Laboratory of Biomedical Optics,

Research-Educational Institute of Optics and Biophotonics, Russia.