spectral fiber sensors for cancer diagnostics in vitro
cancer is one of the leading causes for morbidity and mortality worldwide. therefore, efforts are concentrated on cancer detection in an early stage to enhance survival rates for cancer patients. a certain intraoperative navigation in the tumor border zone is also an essential task to lower the mortality rate after surgical treatment. molecular spectroscopy methods proved to be powerful tools to differentiate cancerous and healthy tissue. within our project comparison of different vibration spectroscopy methods were tested to select the better one or to reach synergy from their combination. one key aspect was in special fiber probe development for each technique. using fiber optic probes in raman, mir and nir spectroscopy is a very powerful method for non-invasive in vivo applications. miniaturization of raman probes was achieved by deposition of dielectric filters directly onto the silica fiber end surfaces. raman, nir and mir spectroscopy were used to analyze samples from kidney tumors. the differentiation between cancer and healthy samples was successfully obtained by multivariate data analysis.
according to the world cancer report in 20141 cancer is one of the leading causes for morbidity and mortality worldwide. around 14 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer related deaths were registered in 2012, and the number of new cancer patients diagnosed each year will rise by 20% between 2002 and 2020. reports in the literature show2 that up to 30% of surgical procedures result in an incomplete removal of the tumor. the task to define tumor margins in-vivo is a great challenge, and optical spectroscopy may solve this problem.
