A special issue on Biophotonics in Europe

Biophotonics is an emerging multidisciplinary research area, embracing all light-based technologies applied to the life sciences and medicine [1–6]. The expression itself is the combination of the Greek syllables “bios” standing for life and “phos” standing for light. Photonics is the technical term for all methodologies and technologies utilizing photons over the whole spectrum from X-ray over the ultraviolet, visible and the infrared to the terahertz region, and its interaction with any matter. Beyond this definition, biophotonics is a scientific discipline of remarkable societal importance. As a part of photonics, it has proved to be an important enabling technology for accelerated progress in medicine and biotechnology. It can do so, because it originated at the interface of the most innovative academic disciplines of the last century, i.e., photonics, biotechnology and nanotechnologies. This field of research brings together scientists from different professions, such as physicists, biologists, pharmacists, medical doctors, etc. To work on common projects, they need to understand the ideas and the techniques of their counterparts. Nobel prizes awarded in 2014 to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources” and to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy” are related to biophotonics. Nowadays, the necessity to gather information on a wide range of parameters appears to be crucial in many fields. It is especially important in medicine, health monitoring, and telemedicine. During recent years, biophotonics has gained popularity in those areas because of their unique advantages: relatively simple configuration, high resolution, potentially low cost and possibility of providing easy control and acquisition of measurement data. With a global market estimated at about 430 billion euro in 2015, and at a CARG (Compound Annual Rate Growth)of 8.4% between 2016 and 2021 [7], the full potential of photonics is only now becoming clear. With predictions of double-digit growth in the future, biophotonics is one of the most promising of global markets. Valued at 32.37 billion euro in 2015, the biophotonics market is estimated to reach 86.24 billion euro by 2024 [8]. The biophotonics market covers a wide range of applications, ranging from tests and components (such as optical instruments, light sources for biophotonics, instrumentation and displays marketed specifically for bioscience applications), medical diagnostics (such as in vitro diagnostics assays and instruments, patient monitoring systems, imaging instrumentation and endoscopes using optics), medical therapeutics (such as surgical equipment and accessories, low-level laser therapy and radiation-based therapy), non-medical applications, biometric devices, and biosensing devices.