Mechanical mapping with chemical specificity by confocal Brillouin and Raman microscopy.

We describe the first application of confocal Brillouin and Raman microscopy to ex vivo human epithelial tissue - Barrett's oesophagus. This non-invasive label-free approach provides high-resolution mechanical mapping with chemical specificity, opening the route to a new integrated method for multiple biomedical and bioengineering applications, and potentially in vivo real-time diagnostics.