Research into the utilization of FTIR based spectroscopic methods has been going on for close to about 25 years with the field expanding from the initial days of cancer diagnosis to now where it includes various diseases occurring due to pathogens, genetic and environmental factors as well as lifestyle and age related factors. In parallel there have been developments in terms of both instrumentation sophistication and computational methods, to make it more clinically appealing while increasing the sensitivity and specificity of the technique. As the field has diversified over the years, a few reports are highlighted that establish the growing acceptance of FTIR spectroscopy as a reliable technique in both basic and applied research in the field of biomedicine.

The field of IR based diagnosis emerged with the validations that carcinogenic and normal tissues from various organs could be differentiated based on their absorbance in the IR region (mostly mid-IR) that was related to the alteration in the chemical composition. The concept of unique fingerprinting was subsequently well established with studies from many different laboratories reporting that each cell or tissue type ranging from microbial cell  to complex human tissues have characteristic absorbance spectrum. Making the system of diagnosis reagent free has been the ultimate challenge in using the technique in routine clinical set ups. While computational analysis for data processing were continuously being developed to increase the sensitivity and specificity of the technology, progress has also been made to provide a unique platform for predicting diseases from examination of biopsies. This in turn is expected to pave the way for real time diagnosis at the site of surgery. Similarly, the ability to utilize both the transverse as well as longitudinal sections of a biopsy for obtaining information on the status of complex tissues like colon provides a unique potential to FTIR based measurements compared to conventional techniques like Immunofluorescence. Likewise the ability to predict the abnormality from both higher and lower wavenumbers of the spectra independently or in combination using biomarkers derived from spectral data and the possibility of using common biomarkers for several diseases have led to the possibility of deployment of this technique in clinical setting for a variety of disease diagnosis

With Regards,
Sara Giselle
Associate Managing Editor
 Journal of Medical Physics and Applied Sciences