THz biosensing applications for clinical laboratories: Bottlenecks and strategies

Rapid and sensitive detection of various cells and biomolecules in a nondestructive manner is of great importance for clinical laboratories. Terahertz (THz) spectrometric approaches are exceptionally suitable for biomedical biosensing due to their nondestructive nature and molecular fingerprinting capability. However, some bottlenecks for THz biosensing, including strong absorption of THz waves by water, low sensitivity and poor spatial resolution/THz wave confinement, still exist, which require cross-disciplinary collaboration between optics and biomedical science to overcome. In this review, we summarize the recent THz sensing strategies that have made significant breakthroughs in solving the above problems, thus paving the way to clinical laboratory applications, including strategies involving metamaterials, microfluidics, optical clearing agents, optical fibers, algorithms and typical combination modes. Despite numerous promising results, many applications addressed in the current studies are not ready for clinical adoption. This review also discusses some remaining hurdles for applications and corresponding stra-tegies in the near future. We hope that we will see accreditation of the potential value of THz biosensing in clinical laboratories by clinicians and patients through interdisciplinary cooperation among re-searchers in biology, optics and materials science. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).