Medical applications of surface-enhanced Raman scattering.

This perspective article provides an overview of selected medical applications of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), highlighting recent developments and trends. The use of SERS for detection, analysis and imaging has attracted great interest in the past decade owing to its high sensitivity and molecular fingerprint specificity. SERS can deliver chemical and structural information from analytes rapidly and nondestructively in a label-free manner. Alternatively, SERS labels or nanotags, when conjugated to target-specific ligands, can be employed for the selective detection and localization of the corresponding target molecule. Biomedical applications based on both approaches are highlighted.