Brillouin microscopy: the new work horse in biomechanics?

Abstract

A recent effort in advancing a well established technique in material science - Brillouin spectroscopy - is making it amenable to applications in biomedical science, e.g. to live cells and tissues. Brillouin scattering is the inelastic scattering of light from longitudinal acoustic phonons that propagate across matter, sensing its viscoelastic properties. As the technique is performed in the GHz range (and on a micro-scale), much attention has been focused on the biological relevance of elasticity and viscosity probed in this spatio-temporal regime. In this talk, I review the most recent advances in this emerging biophotonic technique and its potential in biomechanics and mechanobiology.