Spectroscopy Solutions Adapted to Your Needs

Intraoperative surgery

The successful, complete removal of cancerous tissues relies on the use of increasingly advanced tools to assist surgeons in real-time.

Some of the tools sitting at various stage of development, trial or FDA approval process involve photonics techniques. This includes for example fluorescence imaging, where engineered biomolecules designed to bind solely to targets of interest are used to denote the locations of a tumour or its margins.

But it can also involve techniques with higher sensitivity and specificity such as Near Infrared (NIR) Raman spectroscopy, where the unique chemical signature of different tissue types is used to provide unambiguous information on the presence of residual tumour but also to minimise removal of healthy tissues.

Sorting and Quality Control

Photonics-based techniques are routinely used in Research or Pharmaceutical / Industrial environments for the rapid screening of a wide range of biological samples including for example cells, exomes or proteins, microorganisms, engineered biomaterials, biomolecules or tissues.

Spectroscopy encompasses a range of highly specific techniques (e.g. Raman) that can identify properties or functionalities of interest of these samples either directly/label-free, or indirectly through the probing of engineered biomarkers that target specific biological structures or molecules. It therefore represents a powerful tool for high throughput sorting/classification, quality control or medical diagnostics.

Plants

Spectroscopy-based techniques can be used to gain insight into plant metabolism and development. Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) provides elemental information is used to identify for example heavy metals and pollutants that could be linked to diseases and potential health hazards for consumers.

Raman Spectroscopy – and in particular Raman mapping - can be used to detect specific chemical species linked to particular metabolic or structural development behaviours (e.g cell walls).

Biomaterial Engineering

Nanomaterial science is providing increasingly advanced tools for biological and biomedical applications. These include for example functionalised nanoprobes to enhance the in vivo or ex vivo study and identification of specific biological structures, chemical species or functions (e.g. by developing brighter, more stable and lower toxicity quantum dots, SERS-based substrates).

These can in turn be exploited to develop faster, more accurate medical diagnostic schemes, as well as assist surgical procedures in real-time. Other nanostructure families can also improve the efficiency and accuracy of drug delivery or therapeutic treatments.