Abstract
A less invasive method of reliably detecting skin cancers is
required. Raman spectroscopy is just one of several spectroscopic
methods that look promising, but are not yet sufficiently
reliable. More information is needed on how and why the Raman
spectra of cancerous skin tissue is different from its normal
counterpart. We have used confocal micro-Raman spectroscopy with a
spatial resolution of about a micron to obtain spectra of
unstained thin sections of human skin. We found that there were
clear differences in the Raman spectra between cancerous and
non-cancerous tissue both in cells and in the connective tissue.
The DNA contribution to the spectra was generally stronger in
malignant cells than normal ones. In regions of the dermis far
away from the tumor one obtains the usual collagen spectra of
normal skin, but adjacent to the tumor the spectra no longer
appeared to be those of native collagen.