Abstract: 

Understanding the causes of diseases, recognizing them earlier and treating them more specifically - hopes that are associated with modern biomedicine - requires the determination of diagnostic, prognostic and predictive factors including their comprehensive evaluation in just a few steps or ideally in a single step. In this context, the sharp rise in cancer due to an ageing society and the rapid spread of life-threatening infectious diseases (due in part to unknown pathogens) and antibiotic-resistant germs, which is partly due to increasing worldwide mobility but also to the ill-considered administration of broadspectrum antibiotics, should be mentioned in particular. An effective and early diagnosis and personalized therapy of cancer and infections requires new methods of differential diagnosis and represents an outstanding task of medicine. In principle, the following applies to all diseases: the earlier treatment begins, the better the chances of cure. There is therefore a great need for new diagnostic methods for targeted early diagnosis of diseases in order to be able to use targeted therapy as early as possible. Light plays a key role in the implementation of these ambitious goals. The use of optical technologies in medical diagnostics and therapy has increased rapidly over the last 10 years. Thereby photonic research is supported by advances in the field of digitization for the automated evaluation of optical data using methods of artificial intelligence, or for the online display of optical measurement signals via augmented/virtual reality. Here we present examples at the interface optics/photonics and digitization for personalized medical diagnostics and therapy. We will introduce a series of innovative multi-contrast marker free spectroscopy approaches for (I) rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases for targeted antibiotic administration, which is crucial for the survival of patients (e.g. in a sespis); (II) precise intraoperative tumor margin control, because reliable tumor margin recognition during an intervention is the key to effective tumor treatment; and (III) early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases of the fundus of the eye.

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Juergen Popp studied chemistry at the universities of Erlangen and Würzburg. After his PhD in Chemistry he joined Yale University for postdoctoral work. He subsequently returned to Würzburg University where he finished his habilitation in 2002. Since 2002 he holds a chair for Physical Chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena. Since 2006 he is also the scientific director of the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, Jena. His research interests are mainly concerned with biophotonics. In particular his expertise in the development and application of innovative Raman techniques for biomedical diagnosis should be emphasized. He has published more than 800 journal papers and has been named as an inventor on 20 patents. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biophotonics. In 2012, he received an honorary doctoral degree from Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Professor Jürgen Popp is the recipient of the 2013 Robert Kellner Lecture Award and the prestigious 2016 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award. In 2016 he was elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows. 2018 Juergen Popp was awarded the renowned Ioannes Marcus Marci Medal of the Czechoslovak Spectroscopy Society, he won the third prize of the Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis and received the Kaiser-Friedrich-Forschungspreis. In 2019 he was awarded the Ralf-Dahrendorf-Preis für den Europäischen Forschungsraum.

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