The research area of biophotonics provides novel photonic technologies and tools for medical diagnosis and therapy. Its solutions for an efficient and affordable health care help to deal with the challenges of aging societies and exploding health care costs. Furthermore, biophotonics research aims for a deeper understanding of the processes within living cells, which is a prerequisite for the improvement of early recognition and targeted treatment of diseases. The importance of biophotonics is obvious not only from the impressive annual growth rates of the related industries, but also from the significant amount of research funding in this field. The highly interdisciplinary character of this field of research requires an intensive dialogue between scientists from the various disciplines in order to align, promote and amplify their efforts. Especially the connection between technology and method developers and the biomedical enduser still needs further improvement as biophotonic solutions can only effectively reach the clinics when they are tailored according to the biomedical needs. To spread and promote this way of thinking is one of the major aims of the conference. A broader notion of health includes the environment, as well as the quality of food and pharmaceutical products as its determining factors; thus the conference will cover applications of light in these areas as well.

Contributed papers are solicited concerning, but not limited to, the following areas: Photonics and Nanobiophotonics for Analysis and Diagnosis advanced microscopic and spectroscopic methods spectroscopic methods on a cellular and molecular level optical biochips and array technology optical nanoprobes and nanobiosensors fiber and photonic crystal biomedical technologies. New Photonic Nanomanipulation Tools nano-optical tools and methods for biophotonics and biomedical optics light-tissue interaction optical tweezers and laser catapulting cell sorting and cell positioning optical transfection. Biomedical Optics in and towards Clinical Routine coherence domain optical methods and optical coherence tomography diffuse optical methods fast and ultra-fast imaging methods in vivo cellular and tissue diagnostics, telepathology minimally invasive surgery molecular-guided surgery (includes fluorescence and endogenous) photodynamic therapy skin therapy ophthalmological applications of light photoacoustic tomography neurophotonics. Photonic Solutions for Environmental, Food, and Drug Analysis microscopic and spectroscopic methods for food and drug analysis optical sensors for hazardous substances in air, soil, and water detection and identification of infectious germs (epidemiology) optical technologies for process analytics and quality control agricultural applications like in animal epidemics and plant pathogen detection.