Preliminary study of differentiating smears from cancerous and non-cancerous nasopharyngeal tissue using confocal Raman spectroscopy

Purpose Current practice for diagnosing nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is based on invasive tissue biopsy. This study aims to explore the feasibility of using Raman spectroscopy to differentiate cancerous and non-cancerous nasopharyngeal tissue smears, expecting to realize minimal invasive diagnosis using smears from in vivo mucosa tissue by Raman spectroscopy. Methods Biopsy tissue smears were acquired from 74 patients with pathologically diagnosed nasopharyngeal diseases and measured using confocal Raman spectroscopy. Results Both fingerprint region and high wavenumber Raman spectra were acquired with distinguish features. Multivariate statistical analysis was used to differentiate cancerous and non-cancerous groups, achieving a diagnostic sensitivity of 87.2 and specificity of 85.7 % for differentiating NPC from nasopharyngeal non-cancerous smears. Conclusions This work indicates that the method has a unique advantage in microanalysis for tissue smears which may provide a promising minimal invasive (or noninvasive) diagnosing tool for cancer diagnosis.