Blood plasma surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for non-invasive optical detection of cervical cancer

Based on blood plasma surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) analysis, a simple and label-free blood test for non-invasive cervical cancer detection is presented in this paper. SERS measurements were performed on blood plasma samples from 60 cervical cancer patients and 50 healthy volunteers. Both the empirical approach and multivariate statistical techniques, including principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA), were employed to analyze and differentiate the obtained blood plasma SERS spectra. The empirical diagnostic algorithm based on the integration area of the SERS spectral bands (1310–1430 and 1560–1700 cm−1) achieved a diagnostic sensitivity of 70% and 83.3%, and a specificity of 76% and 78%, respectively, whereas the diagnostic algorithms based on PCA-LDA yielded a better diagnostic sensitivity of 96.7% and a specificity of 92% for separating cancerous samples from normal samples. This exploratory work demonstrates that a silver nanoparticle based SERS plasma analysis technique in conjunction with PCA-LDA has potential for improving cervical cancer detection and screening.