Lasers in Photomedicine and Photobiology

This Conference on biomedical applications of. lasers ~Ias organized by the Quantum Electronics Divisional Board of the European Physical Society (E.P.S.) and held at the Villa of Poggio Imperiale in Florence, September 3-6, 1979. As kno~m, laser surgery (especially microsurgery and endoscopic photo- coagulation) has recently made important progress, and the field is expand- i ng rapidly. Very significant applications of lasers have also been achieved in Bi- ology during recent years (cell microsurgery, cell counting and sorting, cytofluorimeter devices, etc.) and the potential of laser techniques in this field is nO~1 sufficiently well establ ished. A new class of applications of laserradiJtion in Medicine has recently been made possible by important results obtained with low intensity (non- coagulative) visible lasers, such as photodynamic therapy of tumors.At the same time important branches of Medicine, where light effects are studied and optical techniques are presently used for a certain number of clinical applications, such as dermatology and pediatry, appear to be still in their infancy as far as the proper use of optical radiation and techniques, and the understanding of fundamental photoinduced biological processes are con- cerned. Moreover, laser photobiology appears a very promising field for the investigation of fundamental processes at the biomolecular level.