太赫兹波生物效应

Biological effects of terahertz waves

太赫兹波能被生物组织中的水强烈吸收,能与生物组织中生物大分子和这些分子间的弱相互作用产生共振,因而太赫兹波在生物医学中有许多潜在的应用.尽管单个太赫兹光子能量很低,对生物组织没有电离损伤作用,但是随着强度增大,太赫兹波会对生物细胞和组织产生一系列生物效应.由于太赫兹波参数和受辐照生物材料等辐照条件不同,将导致不同的生物学效应,包括以热效应为主和以非热效应为主导致的生物学效应.本文讨论了这两种效应的物理机理,介绍了适合用于生物效应研究的现今主要的强太赫兹辐射源种类,综述了典型的太赫兹波的生物效应具体表现和已有的研究进展,展望了太赫兹波生物效应的潜在应用以及面临的挑战.

There are numerous applications of terahertz(THz) waves in biomedicine due to their properties that can be absorbed strongly by water in biological systems and resonant with biological macromolecules and weak interactions among them in the biological systems. Though there is no direct ionization damage to the biological tissues due to their low photon energy, the THz waves can give rise to a series of biological effects on the biological cells and tissues with the increase of the intensity of the THz beam. Different irradiation conditions such as the different parameters of the THz waves and the different biological systems will result in different biological effects, including mainly the thermal effects and non-thermal effects. In this paper, we discuss first the physical mechanisms of these two kinds of effects, then introduce the existing main THz sources suitable for studying the biological effects, and summarize the typical biological effects in detail and the research progress in this field. Finally we prospect the potential applications and challenges of the THz wave biological effects.