Biomedical applications of terahertz technology

In order to meet the requirements of sustainable growth and development for human beings, biomedical research has been the focus of our attention. Terahertz (THz) is recognized as one of the most promising technologies and it has been widely used in biomedicine. A depiction of the basic principle of THz spectroscopy and THz imaging at the beginning of this article, some emerging techniques like THz microfluidic chips and scattering-type scanning near-field THz spectroscopy (S-SNTS) are investigated as well and it is indicated that these techniques have the potential to tackle some shortcomings of THz technology. This article reviews the applications of THz characterization techniques and THz biological effects in biomedicine between 2010 and 2018. The applications of THz characterization techniques are overviewed by five parts: amino acid and polypeptide, DNA, protein, the detection of cancer, and other applications. The research of THz biological effects mainly concentrates on the effect of THz on the tissue and cells of organisms. Besides, this article briefly introduces the basics of chemometric methods which are mainly applied in data preprocessing and multivariate analysis. Furthermore, we address the drawbacks of THz technology in biomedicine at the end of this article, these need our further study.