Intense continua of electromagnetic radiation of very
brief duration are formed in the interaction of focused
ultra-short terawatt laser pulses with matter. Two different
kinds of experiments, which have been performed utilizing
the Lund 10 Hz titanium-doped sapphire terawatt laser system
are being described, where visible radiation and X-rays,
respectively, have been generated. Focusing into water
leads to the generation of a light continuum through self-phase
modulation. The propagation of the light through tissue
was studied addressing questions related to optical mammography
and specific chromophore absorption. When terawatt laser
pulses are focused onto a solid target with high nuclear
charge Z, intense X-ray radiation of few ps duration
and with energies exceeding hundreds of keV is emitted.
Biomedical applications of this radiation are described,
including differential absorption and gated-viewing imaging.