Moessbauer Absorption Spectroscopy: Bio-medical applications

In this work we summarize the results in bio-medical fields obtained with Moessbauer Absorption Spectroscopy mainly in the last ten years. In the first and second section, the paper gives an overview on the theoretical background and on the analysis of Moessbauer spectra related to the aspects treated in the reported experiments. Biophysical applications are distinguished from medical applications. In biophysical sections, peculiar experiments are presented to show how this technique can give information about proteins dynamics and structure. In the medical section the presented applications are focused on diagnostic and therapeutic aims. We can generally conclude that this technique has gained a well-defined role in these fields, that cannot be covered by others because of its high sensitivity and time window resolutions. In any case due to the possibility to be applied only to some special isotopes (i.e. iron-57) and because of the long time of measurement, Moessbauer spectroscopy is usually used together with other complementary techniques: EPR, NMR, UV absorption, neutron scattering and X-ray diffraction.