Development of deep subsurface Raman spectroscopy for medical diagnosis and disease monitoring.

The recently developed array of Raman spectroscopy techniques for deep subsurface analysis of biological tissues unlocks new prospects for medical diagnosis and monitoring of various biological conditions. The central pillars of these methods comprise spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) and Transmission Raman Spectroscopy facilitating penetration depths into tissue up to two orders of magnitude greater than those achievable with conventional Raman spectroscopy. This article reviews these concepts and discusses their emerging medical applications including non-invasive breast cancer diagnosis, cancer margin evaluation, bone disorder detection and glucose level determination.