Raman spectroscopy-A new method for the intra-operative assessment of axillary lymph nodesThis article is part of a themed issue on Optical Diagnosis. This issue includes work presented at SPEC 2010 Shedding Light on Disease: Optical Diagnosis for the New Millennium, which was held in Manchester, UK June 26th-July 1st 2010

• Main Authors: Horsnell, Jonathan, Stonelake, Paul, Christie-Brown, Jonathan, Shetty, Geeta, Hutchings, Joanne, Kendall, Catherine, Stone, Nicholas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0003-2654; 1364-5528
• DOI: 10.1039/c0an00527d

Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy has become the standard surgical procedure for the sampling of axillary lymph nodes in breast cancer. Intra operative node assessment is currently not offered to the majority of patients but would allow definitive axillary surgery to take place immediately. This would confer benefits both to the patient and to the healthcare system. Our experimental study aims to demonstrate that a Raman spectroscopy probe device could overcome many of the disadvantages of current intra-operative analysis techniques. 38 axillary lymph nodes, 25 negative and 13 positive from 20 patients undergoing breast surgery for invasive breast cancer were assessed using a commercially available Raman spectroscopy probe. Spectra were assessed using principal component fed linear discriminant analysis trained by the histopathology results. Leave one node out cross validation achieved a sensitivity of up to 92% and a specificity of up to 100% in differentiating between normal and metastatic lymph nodes. Raman spectroscopy could be used in an intraoperative setting to improve the care of breast cancer patients.