This volume contains the Proceedings of the CXXVIII Course on Biomedical Applications of Synchrotron Radiation of the International School of Physics “Enrico Fermi” held in Varenna from 12 to 22 July 1994.

The unique properties of synchrotron radiation including its broad spectrum extending from the infrared to the hard-X-ray region, its high degree of collimation and its polarization make it a powerful tool for a very wide range of applications.

Initially it was mainly used to carry out experiments in classical fields like atomic and molecular physics, solid-state physics, chemistry, radiometry and so on. Nowadays it is widely used in many other fields like biophysics, biochemistry, macromolecular crystallography, microtomography, X-ray microscopy, X-ray holography, X-ray lithography, micro engineering and nano fabrication, surface science, material studies, trace and ultra-trace element analysis, medical applications and so on.

New-generation storage rings have been and are being built, dedicated to these kind of applications. Also in the biological and medical fields very important results have been obtained.

For these reasons the Italian Physical Society decided to dedicate its CXXVIII course to the Biomedical Applications.

We have tried to select some of the most important and outstanding topics in the fields of radiology, biocrystallography, time-resolved X-ray footprinting of DNA-protein reactions, X-ray microscopy of living biological systems and perspectives of LIGA processes in the realization of microapparata for medical purposes.

We have invited experts in the different fields to give a general overview of their field and then show their last results.

We would like to thank the Italian Physical Society for the opportunity they gave us and all the persons who contributed to the success of this Summer Course. E. Burattini A. Balerna