Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy in Cancer Detection

Abstract

The rapid developments in the field of infrared spectroscopy in the past decade have demonstrated a potential for disease diagnosis using noninvasive technologies. Several earlier studies have highlighted the advantage of using infrared spectroscopy both in the near- and mid-infrared regions for diagnostic purposes at clinical levels. The areas of focus have been the distinction of premalignant and malignant cells and tissues from their normal state using specific parameters obtained from Fourier transform infrared spectra, making it a rapid and reagent-free method. While it still requires pilot studies and designed clinical trials to ensure the applicability of such systems for cancer diagnosis, substantial progress has been made in incorporating advances in computational methods into the system to increase the sensitivity of the entire setup, making it an objective and sensitive technique suitable for automation to suit the demands of the medical community. The development of fiber-optics systems for infrared spectroscopy have further opened up new and modern avenues in medical diagnosis at various levels of cells, tissues and organs under laboratory and clinical conditions.

Application of Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy for Tumor Diagnosis

“…The first group is due to C=O stretching vibrations of the amide group in α-helix, whereas the absorption bands of the second group are arising from amide n-h bending vibrations in β-sheet (10,30,43). The vibration frequency in this region is very sensitive to changes in the molecular structure of peptide groups (10).…”

“…Recently some spectral methods have been applied for evaluation of malignancies, and some attempts have been made to utilize some of these tests as screening techniques (4,11,31,35,36,43). infrared spectroscopy is a powerful tool for studies of the composition and structure of cellular components (1,49,50).…”

“…The most significant differences in the spectrums of normal and cancerous tissues and cells have been observed in the wavenumber region between 400 and 4000 cm -1 . thus, the mid-infrared region was reported as a major cancer diagnosis indicator (6,7,13,15,19,21,23,25,26,34,38,39,43,46,51,52,62).…”

FTIR-based spectroscopic analysis in the identification of clinically aggressive prostate cancer

“…Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is a nondestructive method for the analysis of tissues, fluids and cells (Sahu and Mordechai, 2005). Infrared radiation causes vibration of the bonds of the molecules within the sample that absorbs it.…”

The application of micro-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in biomedical sciences: The investigation of biological mineral tissues and histopathological materials

“…There are a number of scientific papers about applications of FTIR and micro-FTIR in clinical investigations related to malignancy and cancer detection [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Using these techniques the chemical composition of histopathological and biomaterials without altering morphology can be analyzed [11].…”