Proceedings Article | 17 September 2014
Proc. SPIE. 9230, Twelfth International Conference on Photonics and Imaging in Biology and Medicine (PIBM 2014)
KEYWORDS: Cancer, Tumors, Tissues, Diagnostics, Raman spectroscopy, Micro raman spectroscopy, Inflammation, Computed tomography, Lymphoma, Tissue optics
Micro-Raman spectroscopy is widely used for non-invasive tissue diagnosis and detection, as it provides detailed information about biomolecular composition, structure, and interaction of tissue. In this work, micro-Raman spectroscopy was used to investigate non-cancerous and cancerous nasopharyngeal tissues. The obtained nasopharyngeal tissue samples in vitro are divided into two groups: cancerous (n=12, undifferentiated non-keratinizing carcinomas) and non-cancerous (n=10, 7 chronic inflammations, 2 lymphomas and 1 lymphocytosis). Firstly, we analyzed the Raman spectra in the fingerprint (FP, 400-1800cm<sup>-1) </sup>region acquired. Preliminary results showed that there are some spectral differences in different pathological conditions. Furthermore, Raman spectra from cancerous and non-cancerous nasopharyngeal tissue in the high wavenumber region (HW, 2800-3100cm<sup>-1</sup>) were also reported for the first time. After detailed analysis, we achieved significant differences in Raman bands at 2854, 2874, 2934, and 3067cm<sup>-1</sup> between cancerous and non-cancerous nasopharyngeal tissues. This study demonstrates that both fingerprint and high wavenumber regions of micro-Raman spectroscopy have the potential for the early detection of nasopharyngeal carcinomas.
