Abstract
This paper summarizes the progress achieved over the past fifteen years in applying vibrational (Raman and IR) spectroscopy to problems of medical diagnostics and cellular biology. During this time, a number of research groups have verified the enormous information content of vibrational spectra; in fact, genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic information can be deduced by decoding the observed vibrational spectra. This decoding process is aided enormously by the availability of high-power computer workstations and advanced algorithms for data analysis. Furthermore, commercial instrumentation for the fast collection of both Raman and infrared microspectral data has rendered practical the collection of images based solely on spectral data. The progress in the field has been manifested by a steady increase in the number and quality of publications submitted by established and new research groups in vibrational biological and biomedical arenas.
Highlights
The concept of using vibrational spectroscopic method as adjunct medical diagnostic tools dates back over half a century to a time when infrared spectroscopy was itself in its infancy [1, 2]; yet even forward-looking spectroscopists thought of the possibility of using the biochemical information obtainable by spectroscopic methods, rather than the morphological information commonly used in classical cytopathology and histopathology, for medical diagnoses
Most of the data analysis routines are contained in a software package referred to as “ViChe”, which includes all of the preprocessing and multivariate imaging reconstruction algorithms, for example, principal component and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) imaging
The first subject to be discussed will be methods for the correction of dispersive band shape distortions that are frequently encountered in infrared spectroscopy of human cells and tissues
Summary
The concept of using vibrational spectroscopic method as adjunct medical diagnostic tools dates back over half a century to a time when infrared spectroscopy was itself in its infancy [1, 2]; yet even forward-looking spectroscopists thought of the possibility of using the biochemical information obtainable by spectroscopic methods, rather than the morphological information commonly used in classical cytopathology and histopathology, for medical diagnoses It really took until the first decade of the 21st century that the promise for spectral cytopathology (SCP, spectral diagnosis of cells) and spectral histopathology (SHP, spectral diagnosis of tissue) became practical. This scattering and other physical phenomena (vide infra) may cause the mixing of absorptive and dispersive line shapes in infrared spectroscopy, which was first documented by researchers in the field of biomedical applications of infrared spectroscopy [4, 6,7,8]
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