Raman spectroscopy of human saliva for acute myocardial infarction detection

Abstract

Raman spectroscopy is a rapidly non-invasive technique with great potential for biomedical research. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of using Raman spectroscopy of human saliva for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) detection. Raman spectroscopy measurements were performed on two groups of saliva samples: one group from patients (n=30) with confirmed AMI and the other group from healthy controls (n=31). The diagnostic performance for differentiating AMI saliva from normal saliva was evaluated by multivariate statistical analysis. The combination of principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminate analysis (LDA) of the measured Raman spectra separated the spectral features of the two groups into two distinct clusters with little overlaps, rendering the sensitivity of 80.0% and specificity of 80.6%. The results from this exploratory study demonstrated that Raman spectroscopy of human saliva can serve as a potentially clinical tool for rapid AMI detection and screening.