Multi-configuration Raman spectrometer for early stage diagnosis of oral cancer

Oral Squamous Cell carcinoma (OSCC) is one of the most common and aggressive oral malignancies. Despite all significant advances in medicine, five-year survival rate is still 40%-60%. Diagnosis in early stages is critical as it can improve the survival rate and the quality of life after treatment. This study aims to develop a strategy for diagnosing oral cancer non-invasively in the early stages and to provide better surgical guidance by differentiating healthy and tumor tissues by using Raman spectroscopy. For this purpose, a multimodal Raman system is developed to detect oral cancer biomarkers in patient’s saliva specimen and to study different tissue types in oral cavity with Raman spectroscopy. The developed system is quite compact, easy to use and portable. It can be easily modified for in vivo and ex vivo analysis and can work in both reflection and transmission mode in case of ex vivo measurements. This paper compares the surface enhancement and background spectra from different plasmonic nanoparticles. Lastly, bovine serum albumin (BSA) and uric acid were used as model analytes to at physiologically relevant concentrations to test the performance of the system.