Cervical tissue spectroscopy

Chiriboga, L., Xie, P., Yee, H., Zarou, D., Zakim, D. and Diem, M. (1998) Infrared spectroscopy of human cells and tissues. IV. Detection of dysplastic and neoplastic changes in human cervical tissue via infrared microscopy. Cell Mol. Biol. 44, 219-29. 

Cervical cancer tissue characterized by high-resolution magic angle spinning MR spectroscopy, MAGMA), Magn. Re-son. Mater. Phys., Biol. Med. 16, 174-181. 

Near-IR Raman spectroscopy was used by Mehadevan-Jansen et al. [159] to differentiate cervical precancers from healthy or normal tissue. The algorithms generated may potentially separate benign abnormalities such as inflammation and metaplasia from precancers. 

Workers at Johns Hopkins University, under the tutelage of Chris Brown, worked on screening PAP smears using NIR spectroscopy [229]. Healthy patients, patients with abnormal cells, and patients with cervical cancer were screened. Using discriminant analysis and principal component analysis, the samples were grouped and employed to examine further samples. It was seen that malignant and healthy tissues were distinctly different, while abnormal tissues carried spectral features from both sets. New developments for the detection of cervical cancer by NIR have been published by Yang et al. [230]. The possibility to detect endometrial cancer was also tested [231]. 

Y. Hirano, K. Omura, H. Yoshiba, N. Ohta, C. Hiranuma, K. Nitta, Y. Nishida, and G. Watanabe, Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Assessment of Tissue Oxygen Saturation of Transplanted Jejunal Autografts in Cervical Esophageal Reconstruction, Surg. Today, 35(1), 67 (2005). 

The results show the ability of Raman spectroscopy to classify cervical cancer and pre-cancer with high sensitivity and specificity. These classifications are based on biochemical changes known to accompany cervical cancer such as loss of differentiation and increased proliferation. This study shows the capability of Raman microspectroscopy to investigate not only the tissue but also the cells within the tissue, as it is known that a tumour can contain a heterogeneous population of cells. 

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