Photomedicine is an interdisciplinary branch of medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

 that involves the study and application of light with respect to health and disease. Photomedicine may be related to the practice of various fields of medicine including dermatology, surgery, interventional radiology, optical diagnostics, cardiology, and oncology.

A branch of photomedicine is light therapy

Light therapy

Light therapy or phototherapy consists of exposure to daylight or to specific wavelengths of light using lasers, light-emitting diodes, fluorescent lamps, dichroic lamps or very bright, full-spectrum light, usually controlled with various devices...

.

Examples

• PUVA
  PUVA
  PUVA is a psoralen + UVA treatment for eczema, psoriasis, graft-versus-host disease and vitiligo, and mycosis fungoides. The psoralen is applied or taken orally to sensitize the skin, then the skin is exposed to UVA. Long term use has been associated with higher rates of skin cancer.Psoralens are...
  
   for the treatment of psoriasis
  Psoriasis
  Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease that appears on the skin. It occurs when the immune system mistakes the skin cells as a pathogen, and sends out faulty signals that speed up the growth cycle of skin cells. Psoriasis is not contagious. However, psoriasis has been linked to an increased risk of...
  
  
• Photodynamic therapy
  Photodynamic therapy
  Photodynamic therapy is used clinically to treat a wide range of medical conditions, including malignant cancers, and is recognised as a treatment strategy which is both minimally invasive and minimally toxic...
  
   (PDT) for treatment of cancer and macular degeneration
• Photoluminescence Therapy
• Free electron laser
  Free electron laser
  A free-electron laser, or FEL, is a laser that shares the same optical properties as conventional lasers such as emitting a beam consisting of coherent electromagnetic radiation which can reach high power, but which uses some very different operating principles to form the beam...
  
  
• Laser hair removal
  Laser hair removal
  Laser hair removal was performed experimentally for about 20 years before it became commercially available in the mid 1990s. One of the first published articles describing laser hair removal was authored by the group at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1998...
  
  
• Photobiomodulation
• Optical diagnostics, for example optical coherence tomography
  Optical coherence tomography
  Optical coherence tomography is an optical signal acquisition and processing method. It captures micrometer-resolution, three-dimensional images from within optical scattering media . Optical coherence tomography is an interferometric technique, typically employing near-infrared light...
  
   of coronary plaques using infrared light
• Confocal microscopy
  Confocal microscopy
  Confocal microscopy is an optical imaging technique used to increase optical resolution and contrast of a micrograph by using point illumination and a spatial pinhole to eliminate out-of-focus light in specimens that are thicker than the focal plane. It enables the reconstruction of...
  
   and fluorescence microscopy of in vivo
  In vivo
  In vivo is experimentation using a whole, living organism as opposed to a partial or dead organism, or an in vitro controlled environment. Animal testing and clinical trials are two forms of in vivo research...
  
  tissue
• Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy for in vivo quantification of pigments
  Biological pigment
  Biological pigments, also known simply as pigments or biochromes are substances produced by living organisms that have a color resulting from selective color absorption. Biological pigments include plant pigments and flower pigments...
  
   i(normal and cancerous), and hemoglobin
  Hemoglobin
  Hemoglobin is the iron-containing oxygen-transport metalloprotein in the red blood cells of all vertebrates, with the exception of the fish family Channichthyidae, as well as the tissues of some invertebrates...
  
  
• Perpendicular-polarized flash photography and fluorescence
  Fluorescence
  Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation of a different wavelength. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation...
  
   photography of the skin

Journals and Societies

• The Photomedicine Society
• Photomedicine and Laser Surgery journal
• Photodermatology, Photoimmunology, and Photomedicine

Miscellaneous

• Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital MGH
  Massachusetts General Hospital
  Massachusetts General Hospital is a teaching hospital and biomedical research facility in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts...
  
   and Harvard Medical School
  Harvard Medical School
  Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
  
  
• Article: Role of Photomedicine in Gynecological Ontology