Probing biological systems with terahertz spectroscopy

12 - 16 August 2012 San Diego Convention Center San Diego, CA United States  Conference 8496 Terahertz Emitters, Receivers, and Applications III Conference Program Track: Photonic Devices and Applications Available in print as Proceedings of SPIE Volume 8496 Dates: Sunday-Monday 12 - 13 August 2012 Conference Chairs Manijeh Razeghi, Northwestern Univ.; Alexei N. Baranov, Univ. Montpellier 2 (France); Henry O. Everitt, U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Ctr.; John M. Zavada, National Science Foundation; Tariq Manzur, Naval Undersea Warfare Ctr. Program Committee Stefano Barbieri, Lab. Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques, CNRS, Univ. Paris 7-Denis Diderot (France); Daniel Dolfi, Thales Research & Technology (France); Jérôme Faist, ETH Zurich (Switzerland); Mauro Fernandes Pereira, Jr., Sheffield Hallam Univ. (United Kingdom); Guido Giuliani, Univ. degli Studi di Pavia (Italy); Qing Hu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; M. Quamrul Huda, Univ. of Alberta (Canada); Gaël Mouret, Univ. du Littoral Côte d'Opale (France); Gregory S. Nusinovich, Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Carlo Sirtori, Univ. Paris 7-Denis Diderot (France); Zachary D. Taylor, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Gintaras Valusis, Ctr. for Physical Sciences and Technology (Lithuania); Miriam S. Vitiello, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy) Probing biological systems with terahertz spectroscopy  (Invited Paper)   Paper 8496-26 Author(s): Emma Pickwell-MacPherson, Hong Kong Univ. of Science and Technology (Hong Kong, China); Edward P. Parrott, The Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, China); Yiwen Sun, Shenzhen Univ. (China) Terahertz spectroscopy is able to probe several aspects of biological systems. Most well known is its sensitivity to water due to the strong water absorptions at terahertz frequencies. However an increasing number of studies have shown that it is not just water content that terahertz is sensitive to and that other factors such as tissue structure, molecular arrangement or even temperature can also affect the signal. In this talk examples ranging from breast cancer spectroscopy to antibody protein spectroscopy will be discussed. For more information visit http://spie.org/optics-photonics.xml?WT.mc_id=ROP12GB