No abstract

Biophoton emission or spontaneous ultraweak light emission has been observed from almost all living organisms, with intensities ranging from 10(-19) to 10(-16) W/cm2. The measurement of biophoton emission offers the attractive possibility of noninvasive monitoring of the underlying physiological function of a living system. In the present study, ultraweak biophoton emission from mice with transplanted bladder cancer was detected by a two-dimensional photon-counting system. Photon counts were observed to be 1.51-4.73 times higher from the regions of untreated tumor than from normal regions. Our study suggests that this novel technique may be applicable to the diagnosis of superficial tumors.

An extremely weak native light emission from rat liver nuclei was detected and studied using a highly sensitive single photon counting system. This emission is oxygen dependent and we attribute it to (per) oxidative processes. The effects of deuterium oxide and 1,4-diazabicyclo-[2.2.2] octane on the light emission suggests the possible involvement of singlet oxygen. The kinetic features of the underlying reactions including biphasic response to both oxygen and temperature changes, could be clearly discerned. Further study of this light emission can serve as a useful adjunct to biochemical investigations of oxidative processes which play an important role in mutation, carcinogenesis and aging.

No abstract

A novel application of a highly sensitive charge-coupled device (CCD) camera for imaging of spontaneous ultraweak photon emission from living organisms (biophoton emission) is described. The performance of the CCD camera for low-level light imaging is theoretically compared to a conventionally used two-dimensional photon counting tube, and we deduce that in the wavelength region above 700 nm and for measurement periods over 2000 s, the CCD camera is advantageous over the twodimensional photon counting tube. Experimental results on the two-dimensional biophoton imagery of germinating soybean seedlings also suggest that the wide-range spectral sensitivity of the CCD camera is effective for low-level light imaging from living organisms that have a predominant emission spectrum in the red and near-IR wavelength region.