Application Note: Raman imaging in medical diagnosis and treatment

Confocal Raman imaging is a non-destructive microscopy technique that can identify the molecules in a sample and visualise their distribution in three dimensions…

Life science and medical research are two fields in particular that can benefit from confocal Raman microscopy’s (CRM) ability to perform measurements in liquids, live cell imaging and investigations on soft tissues.

The Raman effect is based on light interacting with the chemical bonds within a sample. This causes a specific energy shift in the backscattered light that can be detected as a Raman spectrum, which allows the molecules to be identified. Confocal Raman imaging combines a confocal microscope and Raman spectrometer into an instrument that can acquire a complete Raman spectrum at every image pixel and achieve a lateral resolution limited by diffraction. 

The following application note describes experiments on malarial blood and cancerous tissue using CRM.