ABSTRACT
The previous chapters dealt with a wide range of experimental techniques that are used in biophotonics research. In only few applications, however, are these experimental methods sufficient without appropriately chosen analysis techniques. For instance, consider fluorescence spectroscopy that acquires a spectrum of endogenous fluorescence in tissue. This spectrum depends on the spatial distribution of fluorophores in tissue as well as the transport of both excitation and emission light through the tissue. Unless one can model the outcome of the experiment, either analytically or numerically, it would be essentially impossible to understand the origins of fluorescence and to characterize the fluorophores—the technique would only be able to generate purely empirical data with no clear connection to tissue properties. Chapter 6 focuses on computational biophotonics methods. Just as biological tissue is immensely complex with various tissue components spanning length scales from nanometers to centimeters, computational biophotonics techniques have been developed to describe light interaction at different levels of tissue complexity.
