The mechanical properties of tissues and cells have proven to be of great importance in biology and medicine, spawning major research efforts and commercial outcomes. The interplay between mechanical and biochemical cues and the mechanical properties of subcellular and cellular constituents has come to be appreciated as key to understanding many fundamental aspects of biology as well as the genesis and progression of disease. At the same time, at the other extreme, the mechanical properties of whole organs and their constituents have been shown to be effective markers of disease on the scale of the human body, as probed by ultrasound elastography and magnetic resonance elastography, both of which, after 20-year gestations, have reached commercial markets.

The role of optics in these companion fields of medical elastography and cell mechanics has been mixed. In cell mechanics, extensions of optical microscopy for the examination of single cells, such as traction force microscopy, have been important, as has atomic force microscopy, that uses optical interferometric detection of nanoindentation. In medical elastography, optics has been much less prominent. All of this has started to change over the last five years or so, as new techniques in optics emerge, and other techniques begin to mature.