FBS Colloquia No.382Nano-Biophotonics Group

Brillouin Scattering Spectroscopy for Viscoelastic Measurements of Biological Samples

Since many biological functions and pathophysiology of diseases are closely related to mechanical properties inside and outside of cells and tissues, mechanical measurements are essential to elucidate the detailed mechanisms. So far, atomic force microscopy and micropipette aspiration have been widely used for mechanical characterization of biological specimens. However, these conventional mechanical characterization methods are not suitable for in vivo measurements. Recently, Brillouin scattering spectroscopy has attracted attention as a method that can measure viscoelasticity nondestructively and with high accuracy. Brillouin scattering is an optical phenomenon in which the frequency of incident light is slightly shifted by the interaction of incident light with elastic waves in a sample, and the viscoelasticity of the sample can be quantitatively measured from the scattering spectrum. In this colloquium, I will introduce Brillouin scattering spectroscopy for biological measurements, which has been developed in Inouye Lab.