Raman Endoscopy for Objective Diagnosis of Early Cancer in the Gastrointestinal System

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the use of optical spectroscopic technologies for early cancer detection in the gastrointestinal system. Raman endoscopy is a unique fiber-optic spectroscopic technology for in vivo histopathological assessment of tissue based on endogenous biomolecules. Recent technical advances have enabled in vivo tissue Raman measurements in real-time during clinical endoscopic examination. The endoscopist can apply Raman endoscopy to analyze the biomolecular signature of cells and tissues in vivo, thereby enabling noninvasive optical biopsies of suspicious lesions during ongoing endoscopy. In this article, we review the applications of Raman endoscopy in the gastrointestinal system and also discuss its potential function and role in gastrointestinal endoscopy and therapeutics. The results of the latest Raman clinical trials are summarized, illustrating the great potential of Raman endoscope technology for non-invasive, in vivo diagnosis and detection of pre-cancer and early cancer in the gastrointestinal system. *Corresponding author: Zhiwei Huang, Optical Bioimaging Laboratory, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore 9, Engineering Drive 1, Singapore 117576, Tel: +656516-8856; Fax: +656872-3069; E-mail: [email protected] Received June 15, 2013; Accepted August 16, 2013; Published August 19, 2013 Citation: Bergholt MS, Zheng W, Ho KY, Teh M, Yeoh KG, et al. (2013) Raman Endoscopy for Objective Diagnosis of Early Cancer in the Gastrointestinal System. J Gastroint Dig Syst S1:008. doi:10.4172/2161-069X.S1-008 Copyright: © 2013 Bergholt MS, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.