The following section is the special issue for the 5th Asian and Pacific-Rim Symposium on Biophotonics (APBP’15) held on 22nd to 24th of April 2015 at Pacifico Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan. This special section contains contributed papers based on the presentations at APBP’15. All the papers have been reviewed and accepted to the editorial policy of Optical Review.

The first APBP was held in Sapporo, Japan in 2001. Since then, the research activities in the field of Biomedical Photonics in the Asian and Pacific-Rim region have been growing rapidly. APBP’15 covered the following areas:

  • Optical microscopy and nanoscopy

  • Novel spectroscopy and molecular probes

  • Optical coherence imaging

  • Photoacoustic methods

  • Diffuse spectroscopy and imaging

  • Photo therapeutics and laser/tissue interactions

  • Novel biophotonics techniques and applications

APBP’15 was organised by the Optical Society of Japan (OSJ) and was co-sponsored by OSJ and 185th Committee on Optical Imaging Technique Development, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The total number of papers presented in APBP’15 was 77 including one plenary talk, 9 invited papers, and the total number of participants was 109.

Finally, the editor would like to sincerely appreciate all who contributed to APBP’15.

April 2016

Editor of Special Section

Eiji Okada