No abstract

Biofluids, such as blood plasma or serum, are currently being evaluated for cancer detection using vibrational spectroscopy. These fluids contain information of key biomolecules, such as proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and nucleic acids, that comprise spectrochemical patterns to differentiate samples. Raman is a water-free and practically non-destructive vibrational spectroscopy technique, capable of recording spectrochemical fingerprints of biofluids with minimum or no sample preparation. Herein, we compare the performance of these two common biofluids (blood plasma and serum) together with ascitic fluid, towards ovarian cancer detection using Raman microspectroscopy. Samples from thirty-eight patients were analysed (n = 18 ovarian cancer patients, n = 20 benign controls) through different spectral pre-processing and discriminant analysis techniques. Ascitic fluid provided the best class separation in both unsupervised and supervised discrimination approaches, where classification accuracies, sensitivities and specificities above 80% were obtained, in comparison to 60–73% with plasma or serum. Ascitic fluid appears to be rich in collagen information responsible for distinguishing ovarian cancer samples, where collagen-signalling bands at 1004 cm−1 (phenylalanine), 1334 cm−1 (CH3CH2 wagging vibration), 1448 cm−1 (CH2 deformation) and 1657 cm−1 (Amide I) exhibited high statistical significance for class differentiation (P < 0.001). The efficacy of vibrational spectroscopy, in particular Raman spectroscopy, combined with ascitic fluid analysis, suggests a potential diagnostic method for ovarian cancer. Graphical abstract

In vitro fertilization is a common method of fertilization in the case of both humans and animals. Although this method has developed very rapidly, there are still many unanswered questions about the optimal characteristics that oocytes should have for performing this procedure. The object of this study was to describe the correlation between the diameter and size of swine oocytes in relation to pubescence. The research was conducted on ovaries of piglets (n = 65) and adult swine (n = 69). Each oocyte was examined with and without the zona pellucida. The analysis showed that the average size of the oocyte from antral follicles is 134.59 ± 11.87 µm and the size of the oocyte is significantly larger for swine in the reproductive period than for piglets entering the prepubertal period. The differences were observed for oocytes both with and without the zona pellucida, as well as in the zona pellucida itself.

Raman hyperspectral imaging is a powerful technique that provides both chemical and spatial information of a sample matrix being studied. The generated data are composed of three-dimensional (3D) arrays containing...

No abstract