Serum laser Raman spectroscopy as a potential diagnostic tool to discriminate the benignancy or malignancy of pulmonary nodules

Huaichao Luo; Ruiling Zu; Lintao Li; Yao Deng; Shuya He; Xing Yin; Kaijiong Zhang; Qiao He; Yu Yin; Gang Yin; Dezhong Yao; Dongsheng Wang

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106693

Serum laser Raman spectroscopy as a potential diagnostic tool to discriminate the benignancy or malignancy of pulmonary nodules

iScience. 2023 Apr 23;26(5):106693. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106693. eCollection 2023 May 19.

Authors

Huaichao Luo¹, Ruiling Zu¹, Lintao Li², Yao Deng¹, Shuya He¹, Xing Yin¹, Kaijiong Zhang¹, Qiao He¹, Yu Yin³, Gang Yin², Dezhong Yao³, Dongsheng Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Clinical Laboratory, Sichuan Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, Sichuan Cancer Center, Affiliated Cancer Hospital of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
² Department of Radiation Oncology, Sichuan Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, Sichuan Cancer Center, Affiliated Cancer Hospital of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
³ Sichuan Institute for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.

Abstract

It has been proved that Raman spectral intensities could be used to diagnose lung cancer patients. However, the application of Raman spectroscopy in identifying the patients with pulmonary nodules was barely studied. In this study, we revealed that Raman spectra of serum samples from healthy participants and patients with benign and malignant pulmonary nodules were significantly different. A support vector machine (SVM) model was developed for the classification of Raman spectra with wave points, according to ANOVA test results. It got a good performance with a median area under the curve (AUC) of 0.89, when the SVM model was applied in discriminating benign from malignant individuals. Compared with three common clinical models, the SVM model showed a better discriminative ability and added more net benefits to participants, which were also excellent in the small-size nodules. Thus, the Raman spectroscopy could be a less-invasive and low-costly liquid biopsy.

Keywords: Cancer; Diagnostics; Oncology.