Editors' Picks Collection: Biophotonics

To honor its 40th Anniversary, the editors of Optics Letters selected articles from a variety of topic areas that reflect the progression of each area over the journal's history. Below is a collection of articles in the area of Biophotonics.

Note that this selection of articles is not meant to be exhaustive but authoritative, showing that significant contributions were made and continue to be made in this area.


  1. Observation of a single-beam gradient force optical trap for dielectric particles

    A. Ashkin, J. M. Dziedzic, J. E. Bjorkholm, and Steven Chu

    Opt. Letters 11(5) 288-290 (1986)

  2. In vivo retinal imaging by optical coherence tomography

    E. A. Swanson, J. A. Izatt, M. R. Hee, D. Huang, C. P. Lin, J. S. Schuman, C. A. Puliafito, and J. G. Fujimoto

    Opt. Letters 18(21) 1864-1866 (1993)

  3. Optical coherence microscopy in scattering media

    Joseph A. Izatt, Michael R. Hee, Gabrielle M. Owen, Eric A. Swanson, and James G. Fujimoto

    Opt. Letters 19(8) 590-592 (1994)

  4. Breaking the diffraction resolution limit by stimulated emission: stimulated-emission-depletion fluorescence microscopy

    Stefan W. Hell and Jan Wichmann

    Opt. Letters 19(11) 780-782 (1994)

  5. Noninvasive imaging of in vivo blood flow velocity using optical Doppler tomography

    Zhongping Chen, Thomas E. Milner, Shyam Srinivas, Xiaojun Wang, Arash Malekafzali, Martin J. C. van Gemert, and J. Stuart Nelson

    Opt. Letters 22(14) 1119-1121 (1997)

  6. In vivo bidirectional color Doppler flow imaging of picoliter blood volumes using optical coherence tomography

    Joseph A. Izatt, Manish D. Kulkarni, Siavash Yazdanfar, Jennifer K. Barton, and Ashley J. Welch

    Opt. Letters 22(18) 1439-1441 (1997)

  7. In vivo ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence tomography

    W. Drexler, U. Morgner, F. X. Kärtner, C. Pitris, S. A. Boppart, X. D. Li, E. P. Ippen, and J. G. Fujimoto

    Opt. Letters 24(17) 1221-1223 (1999)

  8. Real-time in vivo imaging by high-speed spectral optical coherence tomography

    Maciej Wojtkowski, Tomasz Bajraszewski, Piotr Targowski, and Andrzej Kowalczyk

    Opt. Letters 28(19) 1745-1747 (2003)

  9. Improved signal-to-noise ratio in spectral-domain compared with time-domain optical coherence tomography

    Johannes F. de Boer, Barry Cense, B. Hyle Park, Mark C. Pierce, Guillermo J. Tearney, and Brett E. Bouma

    Opt. Letters 28(21) 2067-2069 (2003)

  10. In vivo human retinal imaging by ultrahigh-speed spectral domain optical coherence tomography

    Nader Nassif, Barry Cense, B. Hyle Park, Seok H. Yun, Teresa C. Chen, Brett E. Bouma, Guillermo J. Tearney, and Johannes F. de Boer

    Opt. Letters 29(5) 480-482 (2004)

  11. Noninvasive photoacoustic angiography of animal brains in vivo with near-infrared light and an optical contrast agent

    Xueding Wang, Geng Ku, Malgorzata A. Wegiel, Darryl J. Bornhop, George Stoica, and Lihong V. Wang

    Opt. Letters 29(7) 730-732 (2004)

  12. Adaptive-optics ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence tomography

    B. Hermann, E. J. Fernández, A. Unterhuber, H. Sattmann, A. F. Fercher, W. Drexler, P. M. Prieto, and P. Artal

    Opt. Letters 29(18) 2142-2144 (2004)

  13. Optical stimulation of neural tissue in vivo

    Jonathon Wells, Chris Kao, Karthik Mariappan, Jeffrey Albea, E. Duco Jansen, Peter Konrad, and Anita Mahadevan-Jansen

    Opt. Letters 30(5) 504-506 (2005)

  14. Buffered Fourier domain mode locking: unidirectional swept laser sources for optical coherence tomography imaging at 370,000 lines/s

    Robert Huber, Desmond C. Adler, and James G. Fujimoto

    Opt. Letters 31(20) 2975-2977 (2006)

  15. Focusing coherent light through opaque strongly scattering media

    I. M. Vellekoop and A. P. Mosk

    Opt. Letters 32(16) 2309-2311 (2007)

  16. Trapping and guiding microparticles with morphing autofocusing Airy beams

    Peng Zhang, Jai Prakash, Ze Zhang, Matthew S. Mills, Nikolaos K. Efremidis, Demetrios N. Christodoulides, and Zhigang Chen

    Opt. Letters 36(15) 2883-2885 (2011)