Application of a near-infrared laser tweezers Raman spectroscopy system for label-free analysis and differentiation of diabetic red blood cells.

A home-made near-infrared laser tweezers Raman spectroscopy (LTRS) system was applied to detect hemoglobin variation in red blood cells (RBCs) from diabetes without exogenous labeling. Results showed significant spectral differences existed between the diabetic and normal RBCs, including the peaks dominated by protein components (e.g. 1003 cm-1) and heme groups (e.g. 753 cm-1) in RBCs, and accurate classification results for diabetes detection were obtained by linear discriminant analysis with 100% sensitivity (i.e. no false negatives in the study). This work indicated the great promise of LTRS as a label-free RBC analytical tool for improving the accurate detection of type II diabetes.