What future for in vivo photon imaging in clinical practice?

With the increasing molecular understanding of disease processes, there has been a dramatic change, over the past years, in our consideration of non invasive imaging of cancer in humans. The miniaturization of optical devices, and fiber optic coupling greatly improved the ability of in-vivo photon imaging to emphasis pathological pathways at molecular level or to achieve true "optical biopsy". Innovative fluorescent imaging agents called "smart probes" can provide in-vivo readouts of some of the key activities known to underlie human disease states in oncology. The current contribution of biophotonics in clinical imaging remains limited but diffuse optical tomography of the breast has paved the way. New optical concepts come to age and should soon find their place among the other imaging modalities.