Clinical superficial Raman probe aimed for epithelial tumor detection: Phantom model results.

A novel clinical Raman probe for sampling superficial tissue to improve in vivo detection of epithelial malignancies is compared to a non-superficial probe regarding depth response function and signal-to-noise ratio. Depth response measurements were performed in a phantom tissue model consisting of a polyethylene terephthalate disc in an 20%-Intralipid(®) solution. Sampling ranges of 0-200 and 0-300 μm were obtained for the superficial and non-superficial probe, respectively. The mean signal-to-noise ratio of the superficial probe increased by a factor of 2 compared with the non-superficial probe. This newly developed superficial Raman probe is expected to improve epithelial cancer detection in vivo.