Introduction to the JSTQE Issue on Nanobiophotonics

The papers in this special issue focus on nanobiophotonics. Nanobiophotonics is an emerging field of modern science and biomedical nanotechnology. This new field continues to vastly expend with state-of-the-art developments across the entire spectrum of biomedical applications ranging from fundamental studies of light-nanobiomaterial interactions to clinical diagnostics and therapeutics. In nanobiophotonics research areas, there has been great impetus recently for noninvasive imaging and sensing intracellular structures and functions as well as for obtaining quantitative information for light-tissue interactions at the cellular, intracellular and molecular level. The significant interest in these studies is determined by the unique advantages of nanobiophotonics techniques in terms of using non-ionizing radiation, providing noninvasive intracellular, cellular and tissue imaging and sensing in-vivo with ultrahigh resolution in the subwavelength nanoscale range (smaller than 100 nm).