Vibrational Microspectroscopy for Cancer Screening

Abstract

Vibrational spectroscopy analyses vibrations within a molecule and can be used to characterise a molecular structure. Raman spectroscopy is one of the vibrational spectroscopic techniques, in which incident radiation is used to induce vibrations in the molecules of a sample, and the scattered radiation may be used to characterise the sample in a rapid and non-destructive manner. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is a complementary vibrational spectroscopic technique based on the absorption of IR radiation by the sample. Molecules absorb specific frequencies of the incident light which are characteristic of their structure. IR and Raman spectroscopy are sensitive to subtle biochemical changes occurring at the molecular level allowing spectral variations corresponding to disease onset to be detected. Over the past 15 years, there have been numerous reports demonstrating the potential of IR and Raman spectroscopy together with multivariate statistical analysis techniques for the detection of a variety of cancers including, breast, lung, brain, colon, oral, oesophageal, prostate and cervical cancer. This paper discusses the recent advances and the future perspectives in relation to cancer screening applications, focussing on cervical and oral cancer.

FT-IR Spectroscopy Study in Early Diagnosis of Skin Cancer

“…The bands in the spectral region between 3000 cm -1 to 2870 cm -1 ( Figure 1) are assigned to the symmetric and antisymmetric stretching vibrations of methyl (v as CH 3 , v s CH 3 ) and to methylene (v as CH 2 , v s CH 2 ) groups of lipids, proteins, and glycosides (9)(10)(11)(12)15). A considerable increase of the intensity of these bands is observed in the spectra of MM and NEV, and less in BCC spectra, indicating that the environment of the membrane has changed and the surrounding medium has become more lipophilic (15).…”

“…Fourier TransformInfrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy provides multidimensional information about the components of a tissue, and can be used as a tool for the non-invasive characterization and identification of the molecular features of various cancer types. The IR spectra consist the "fingerprint" of any material, including tumor tissues and are very sensitive to structural changes of the biological molecules that are formed due to biochemical and metabolic processes that occur during cancer development (9)(10)(11)(12). The mid-IR spectra (4000-400 cm -1 ) of normal and malignant tissues indicated that FT-IR spectroscopy could be useful in the diagnosis of skin cancers (9)(10)(11)(12).…”

“…The IR spectra consist the "fingerprint" of any material, including tumor tissues and are very sensitive to structural changes of the biological molecules that are formed due to biochemical and metabolic processes that occur during cancer development (9)(10)(11)(12). The mid-IR spectra (4000-400 cm -1 ) of normal and malignant tissues indicated that FT-IR spectroscopy could be useful in the diagnosis of skin cancers (9)(10)(11)(12). FT-IR spectroscopy today is a rapid and easy-to-use method.…”

A study of hormonal effects in cervical smear samples using Raman spectroscopy

“…The coupling of the light generates vibrations within the material and these vibrations are characteristic of the chemical structure, the energy of the scattered light is reduced by an amount equal to the vibrational energy and from this a rapid, label‐free, non‐destructive measurement of the complete biochemical fingerprint of a biological sample can be obtained. Over the past 15 years, the potential of Raman spectroscopy together with multivariate statistical analysis has been demonstrated for the detection of a variety of cancers, including cervical cancer . In initial infrared spectroscopy studies on cervical cytopathology samples , spectra were recorded from cell pellets rather than from single cells and the presence of metaplastic cells, endocervical columnar cells, polymorphs, blood, cervical mucus and debris were all identified as confounding factors .…”

Mid‐infrared spectral microimaging of inflammatory skin lesions

“…The development of new biophysical methods for automatic analysis is in progress to promote more objective and potentially quantitative analysis techniques. In this respect, the interest of IR microspectroscopy for characterizing cancerous and in particular cancerous cutaneous tissue has already been demonstrated. However, to our knowledge, inflammatory skin diseases have never been investigated using IR vibrational analysis.…”