Differentiation of fibrotic liver tissue using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

Abstract

Hepatic cirrhosis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide due to hepatitis C, alcoholism and fatty liver disease associated with obesity. Assessment of hepatic fibrosis relies in qualitative histological evaluation of biopsy samples. This method is timeconsuming and depends on the histopathologists' interpretation. In the last decades, noninvasive techniques were developed to detect and monitor hepatic fibrosis. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a good candidate for a real-time, independent and fast technique to diagnose hepatic fibrosis. In this work LIBS was employed to characterize rat liver tissues with different stages of fibrosis. Depth profiling measurements were carried out by using a nanosecond Nd:YAG laser operated at the fundamental wavelength and an echelle spectrometer coupled with an ICCD camera. Due to the soft nature of the samples, plasma conditions largely change between consecutives shots. Thus, a theoretically supported procedure to correct the spectral line intensities was implemented. This procedure allows the reduction of the intensities' dispersion from 67% to 12%. After the correction, the LIBS signal shows an enhancement in calcium intensity by a factor of three as the fibrosis progressed. Calcium is known to increase crosslinking of extracellular matrix proteins in the fibrous septa. Therefore, our result singles it out as a key participant in the hepatic fibrosis.

A Review on Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy in Different Cancers Diagnosis and Classification

“…Hepatic fibrosis is chronic liver damage that can progress to cirrhosis, hepatic failure, and finally hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or liver cancer [56]. Hinojosa et al [57] used LBS to demonstrate the differentiation of chronic liver injury known from normal for hepatic fibrosis liver diseases. For this purpose, they used a fibrotic and normal liver sample of mice.…”

“…Rizk et al [20] reported variations of different trace elements levels like Mn, Cu, Fe, Na, Mg, K, and Ca of liver cancer by LIBS. In the same fashion, Teran-Hinojosa et al [21] employed LIBS to find the correlation in elemental concentration between fibrotic and healthy samples of mice liver tissues. For lymphoma, and multiple myeloma (MM), Chen et al [22,23] used whole blood and serum sample to differentiate between normal and cancer blood samples.…”

Feasibility Study on Discrimination of Neo-plastic and Non-Neoplastic Gastric Tissues Using Spark Discharge Assisted Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

“…Emissions of excited atoms, ions, and molecules in this plasma are recorded as a spectrum and analyzed for atomic identification of the sample. In recent years, this technique is mostly used for analysis of different tissues, including hard tissues such as hair, 11 nails [12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and teeth [19][20][21][22] and soft tissues such as blood, 23 cervical, 24 liver 25 and colorectal tissues. 26 What sets this method apart from other conventional methods is the convenience of sample preparation, higher speed of performance and no direct connection with samples especially contaminant materials.…”

Glymphatic clearance of simulated silicon dispersion in mouse brain analyzed by laser induced breakdown spectroscopy

“…LIBS has become an important tool due to the high resolution and real-time assessment of specific elements in different biological tissues (Rehse et al, 2012). In fact, some researchers (Teran-Hinojosa et al, 2017;Kumar et al, 2004) have used LIBS to characterize tissues for diagnosis of diseases such as fibrosis (Rehse et al, 2012) or to characterize certain pathogens (Mohaidat et al, 2012;Kim et al, 2004). The atomic emission lines obtained from the spectrum in LIBS permit the identification of elements while relative intensities are used to determine the relative concentrations of those corresponding elements.…”