Abstract
In the last decade, Raman Spectroscopy has demonstrated to be a label-free and non-destructive optical spectroscopy able to improve diagnostic accuracy in cancer diagnosis. This is because Raman spectroscopic measurements can reveal a deep molecular understanding of the biochemical changes in cancer tissues in comparison with non-cancer tissues. In this pilot study, we apply Raman spectroscopy imaging to the diagnosis and grading of chondrogenic tumors, including enchondroma and chondrosarcomas of increasing histologic grades. The investigation included the analysis of areas of 50×50 μm2 to approximately 200×200 μm2, respectively. Multivariate statistical analysis, based on unsupervised (Principal Analysis Components) and supervised (Linear Discriminant Analysis) methods, differentiated between the various tumor samples, between cells and extracellular matrix, and between collagen and non-collagenous components. The results dealt out basic biochemical information on tumor progression giving the possibility to grade with certainty the malignant cartilaginous tumors under investigation. The basic processes revealed by Raman Spectroscopy are the progressive degrading of collagen type-II components, the formation of calcifications and the cell proliferation in tissues ranging from enchondroma to chondrosarcomas. This study highlights that Raman spectroscopy is particularly effective when cartilaginous tumors need to be subjected to histopathological analysis.
Highlights
Cancer diagnosis remains one of the biggest challenges in medicine
Our results show that Principal Component Analysis (PCA) cannot discriminate between components belonging to collagen or DNA, respectively, because the most significant bands belonging to both collagen and DNA present generally positive values so making possible to apply PCA to discriminate between single Extracellular Matrix (ECM) and cells components
CS G1 behaves essentially as a locally aggressive tumor, with metastatic disease developing only in exceptional cases, whereas CS G2 and CS G3 present a high risk of distant metastases[18,39]
Summary
Cancer diagnosis remains one of the biggest challenges in medicine. The development of new noninvasive strategies or the improvements of existing ones makes Raman Spectroscopy (RS) fundamental for diagnosing the chemical compositions of cells and tissues. RS is exploited to evaluate the biochemical attributes of bones, and has revealed pathological changes in the components of the bone matrices These changes include alterations in phosphate, carbonate and collagen degradation, as well as spectral changes in terms of bone metastasis primed by prostate and breast cancer[11,12,13]. Local biochemical modifications due to calcifications, Extracellular Matrix (ECM), or chondrocyte cells are clearly evidenced Such findings have highlighted that Raman-based marker-free chemical imaging is a powerful tool to identify the distribution of cellular and matrix components in cartilaginous tissues
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