Biophotonics and nonlinear fiber optics have traditionally been two independent fields. Since the discovery of fiber‐based supercontinuum generation in 1999, biophotonics applications employing incoherent light have experienced a large impact from nonlinear fiber optics, primarily because of the access to a wide range of wavelengths and a uniform spatial profile afforded by fiber supercontinuum. However, biophotonics applications employing coherent light have not benefited from the most well‐known techniques of supercontinuum generation for reasons such as poor coherence (or high noise), insufficient controllability, and inadequate portability. Fortunately, a few key techniques involving nonlinear fiber optics and femtosecond laser development have emerged to overcome these critical limitations. Despite their relative independence, these techniques are the focus of this review, because they can be integrated into a low‐cost portable biophotonics source platform. This platform can be shared across many different areas of research in biophotonics, enabling new applications such as point‐of‐care coherent optical biomedical imaging.

中文翻译：

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用于生物光子学的相干光纤超连续谱。

生物光子学和非线性光纤传统上是两个独立的领域。自 1999 年发现基于光纤的超连续谱产生以来，采用非相干光的生物光子学应用受到了非线性光纤光学的巨大影响，主要是因为光纤超连续谱提供了广泛的波长范围和均匀的空间分布。然而，由于相干性差（或高噪声）、可控性不足和便携性不足等原因，采用相干光的生物光子学应用并没有受益于最著名的超连续谱产生技术。幸运的是，已经出现了一些涉及非线性光纤和飞秒激光器开发的关键技术来克服这些关键限制。尽管他们相对独立，这些技术是本次审查的重点，因为它们可以集成到低成本便携式生物光子学源平台中。该平台可以在生物光子学的许多不同研究领域共享，从而实现诸如即时相干光学生物医学成像等新应用。