Spontaneous Raman Spectroscopy for Intracranial Tumor Diagnostics

Surgical removal of glial tumors is a challenge due to their infiltrative growth. At the moment, the main way to solve this problem is fluorescent intraoperative navigation. However, in the absence of accumulation of a fluorescent marker in tumor tissues, other diagnostic parameters are required to find the boundaries of such tumors. Raman spectroscopy has the advantages of optical spectroscopy such as speed and non-invasiveness. With an exhaustive database of reference spectra of those components that can be expressed in glial tumors, Raman spectroscopy allows for diagnostics of such tumors and their intraoperative demarcation. The purpose of this work was to study healthy brain tissues and intracranial tumors of laboratory animals and humans in order to detect significant differences using spectroscopy of spontaneous Raman scattering. Also, the analysis of cultures of tumor and immunocompetent cells was carried out. The results of the study showed significant differences in the spectral lines related to lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, which can be used to develop an optical biopsy method of brain tumors based on Raman spectroscopy.