research

Biomedical applications of light are expanding dynamically. This handbook does a good job of organizing a mass of information on dozens of cutting-edge technologies. The articles by leading experts are aimed at professionals but do not, in most cases, require specialized knowledge to understand. The clear graphics appropriately support the text, while the chapter bibliographies are extensive.
So this handbook can be recommended to any scientist, medical doctor, engineer, or graduate student in this or related fields.
However, this book suffers from certain flaws that it shares with many other English-language books in this field. Scientists in Russia and other East European countries are very competitive in certain areas of biomedical photonics. They lead the world in the centrally important field of low-intensity laser therapy (LILT). Yet the book's discussion of biophotonics and its almost totally monoglot bibliographies do not come close to incorporating their findings.
Even the sole article on LILT states that it will not discuss whole body responses to this therapy. Why not? They are very relevant in a handbook of this sort.
What's more, this article omits any mention of Biophotonic Therapy (Photoluminescence, Quantum Hemotherapy), the treatment of the blood with a low-intensity laser via an intravenous waveguide or, in extracorporeal mode, with UV and visible light. The reader would never learn from this handbook that thousands of practitioners throughout the world use Biophotonic Therapy every day for a wide range of indications. The mechanisms of BT are well characterized, and more than 400 scientific articles and a dozen books are devoted to BT's clinical track record.
These are unfortunate omissions in an otherwise admirable handbook.