Ghita Adrian, Matousek Pavel, Stone Nick
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter, Streatham Campus, EX4 4QL, Exeter, UK.
Central Laser Facility, Research Complex at Harwell, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Oxford, OX11 0QX, UK.
J Biophotonics. 2018 Jan;11(1). doi: 10.1002/jbio.201600260. Epub 2017 Jun 21.
The aim of this research was to develop a novel approach to probe non-invasively the composition of inorganic chemicals buried deep in large volume biological samples. The method is based on advanced Transmission Raman Spectroscopy (TRS) permitting chemical specific detection within a large sampling volume. The approach could be beneficial to chemical identification of the breast calcifications detected during mammographic X-ray procedures. The chemical composition of a breast calcification reflects the pathology of the surrounding tissue, malignant or benign and potentially the grade of malignancy. However, this information is not available from mammography, leading to excisional biopsy and histopathological assessment for a definitive diagnosis. Here we present, for the first time, a design of a new high performance deep Raman instrument and demonstrate its capability to detect type II calcifications (calcium hydroxyapatite) at clinically relevant concentrations and depths of around 40 mm in phantom tissue. This is around double the penetration depth achieved with our previous instrument design and around two orders of magnitude higher than that possible when using conventional Raman spectroscopy.
本研究的目的是开发一种新方法，以非侵入性方式探测深埋于大量生物样本中的无机化学成分。该方法基于先进的透射拉曼光谱（TRS），能够在大采样体积内进行化学特异性检测。这种方法可能有助于对乳腺钼靶X线检查过程中检测到的乳腺钙化进行化学鉴定。乳腺钙化的化学成分反映了周围组织的病理情况，是恶性还是良性，甚至可能反映恶性程度。然而，乳腺钼靶检查无法提供这些信息，因此需要进行切除活检和组织病理学评估以明确诊断。在此，我们首次展示了一种新型高性能深部拉曼仪器的设计，并证明了其在模拟组织中以临床相关浓度和约40毫米深度检测II型钙化（羟基磷灰石钙）的能力。这大约是我们之前仪器设计所达到穿透深度的两倍，比使用传统拉曼光谱时可能达到的深度高出约两个数量级。
