Near-infrared spectroscopy has found many applications, which are described in part in other chapters of this book. For chemical quality and process control, nearinfrared spectroscopy has received much attention because of its speed and attribute of requiring little or no sample preparation. Fast measurement equipment and techniques have been established within the pharmaceutical industry for the identification of raw materials on receipt, as well as for verifying the composition of pharmaceutical formulations before the final products leave the premises. Within the life sciences arena, several standard methods for food analysis have been accepted by a number of different associations, even as early as in the 1980s, one example being the determination of protein and moisture in cereals. Other applications are concerned with the analysis of meat and fish, for example, for the determination of fat, protein etc., whereas convenient analyses of beer and other alcoholic beverages are carried out by transmission spectroscopy. The authentication of food and food ingredients is another field in which near-infrared spectroscopy has been successfully applied.The relatively late emergence of near-infrared spectroscopy into the medical field is mainly due to the complexity of the samples under investigation, analytes of low concentrations and problems associated with the intense absorptions of water, usually the major constituent of biomedical samples and, in particular, of biofluids. Therefore, it was of great importance to have good reproducibility for the recording of spectra and a high signal-to-noise ratio, which could be accomplished by using Fourier-transform spectrometers. Clinical chemistry has profited from recent improvements in instrumentation, and the successful near-infrared spectroscopic analysis of human blood plasma for a number of important analytes has marked the beginning of a new era [l].The rationale behind medical diagnosis by spectroscopy was substantiated by Mantsch and co-workers through the fact that diseases are accompanied by changes in the biochemistry of the cells and tissues that make up the different organs in our body. Since the infrared spectroscopic technique can provide information on biological molecules like proteins and peptides, chromophores and chro-Near-In frared Spectroscopy : Principles, Instruments, Applications