Optical clearing of biological tissues: prospects of application in medical diagnostics and phototherapy

A review of specific features and methods of optical clearing and related interaction of light with biotissues is presented. Physical and molecular mechanisms of immersion, compression, and photodynamic/photothermal optical clearing of some fibrous and cellular biotissues are discussed. The possibility of efficient control of the biotissue optical properties, particularly, the reduction of light scattering in biotissues is demonstrated, which facilitates the increased efficiency of various optical visualisation methods (optical biopsy) used in medical purposes