Università Roma Tre

• Fundamentals of light and matter
Light propagation in vacuum and through dielectric media, interference, diffraction, coherence; Polarization of light, optical activity and birefringence. Light sources and photons; Schrödinger equation; Quantized states in atoms and molecules; Electronic and vibrational states of a molecule; Stereoisomers;
• Basics of biology
Cellular structure and types; Chemical building blocks; Cellular processes: replication, biosynthesis and energy production; Protein classification and function; Organization of cells into tissues.
• Light-matter interactions
Interactions between light and a molecule; Einstein’s model of absorption and emission; Interaction of light with a bulk matter; Fate of excited states; Electronic absorption spectroscopy; Electronic luminescence spectroscopy; Raman spectroscopy; Spectroscopy utilizing optical activity of chiral media; Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy.
• Lasers
Principles of lasers; classification of lasers; Biophotonics applications; Radiometry; Nonlinear optics; multiphoton absorption; Time-resolved approaches; Laser safety.
• Photonbiology
Interaction of light with cells and tissues; Photoexcitation and spectroscopy in vivo; Optical biopsy; Single molecule detection.
• Bioimaging
Overview of optical imaging; Transmission microscopy; Types of microscope; Numerical aperture and resolution; Phase contrast microscopy; Fluorescence microscopy; Scanning microscopy; Confocal microscopy; Optical coherence tomography; Spectral and time-resolved imaging; Localized spectroscopy; Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) imaging; Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM); Time and Frequency-domain FLIM;
• Flow cytometry
Components of a flow cytometer; Optical response; Fluorochromes for flow cytometry; Data manipulation and presentation; Immunophenotyping; DNA analysis.

P. N. Prasad - Introduction to Biophotonics