Phototherapy Light Measurement

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Even in ancient times, light was found to be an effective medical treatment

Light provides many benefits to man, not the least of which are energy, heat, and food but it has long been known to have many medicinal qualities as well.

Phototherapy, also known as light therapy, is treatment by application of either broad-spectrum or a specific waveband of light, and has its roots in antiquity.

The first deliberate use of light as a form of medical treatment can be traced back around 1400 BC to India where sufferers of vitiligo, a skin condition causing loss of pigmentation, were successfully treated with exposure to sunlight after certain plant extracts were administered that contained skin photosensitizing compounds. These compounds, called psoralens, made their exposure to UVA more effective at re-pigmentation.

The ancients didn’t know why it worked, but they knew it worked. Over the centuries since, scientific research has taken these first simple beginnings and transformed them into sophisticated forms of widely accepted treatments for numerous medical, psychological, and cosmetic conditions.

Phototherapy has many benefits but requires careful control.

Phototherapy has given practitioners and patients new options for the treatment of difficult chronic disorders and problematic conditions such as dermatitis, psoriasis, common acne, eczema, and seasonal affective disorder as well as vitiligo, neonatal jaundice, delayed sleep-phase syndrome, polymorphous light eruption, and mycosis fungoides among others.

In many cases, phototherapy treatments have been found to be as or more effective than traditional procedures while less expensive and typically faster. The demands of a busy world have given way to more powerful phototherapy treatments, particularly narrowband UVB systems, capable of delivering the required exposure in the shortest amount of time, making phototherapy an even more convenient treatment option.

With decreased exposure times and fewer required visits, these treatments are more convenient than ever and can now fit around a patients schedule or even done by the patient themselves in their own home, office, or car due to advances in smaller, safer, and easier to use portable and home-use phototherapy light sources.

However, with these benefits come certain considerations, while ultraviolet light (UVA and UVB), infrared (IR), and even blue or red visible light have all been shown to be effective at treating many conditions, also pose certain health risks due to the potential damage to the skin or eyes from over exposure, making it critical to monitor both the wavelength of light and the amount of exposure given to a patient.

Light measurement instrumentation to match any phototherapy application.

International Light Technologies (ILT) has developed a line of reliable, highly accurate light measurement systems capable of both research and development or clinical use and available to match the wide variety of light sources used in modern phototherapy treatments.