[Study on the pathological uterine tissues with a fiber Raman spectrometry]

The Raman spectrum can reflect the differences in chemical components and molecular structures of tissues and cells, and significant progress has been made in the research on structures, functions and diseases of cells and tissues with Raman spectroscopy. A fiber Raman spectrometer was used to measure the Raman spectra of some uterine malignant, benign, and normal tissues, such as uterine myometrium tissue, uterine myoma tissue, normal endometrium tissue, malignant endometrium tissue and adenomyosis tissue. After having compared the Raman spectrum of pathological tissues with that of the corresponding normal tissues, we observed that the peak referring to Methionine upsilon(C--S) (Met upsilon(C--S)) splits into two peaks in the uterine myoma tissues caused by the vibrations of tryptophan (Trp) and cartotene, which are not present in the normal tissues. There is a peak at 1447 cm(-1) in the endometrium tissues corresponding to CH2--CH3 def, which is one of the characteristic peaks of cancerous tissues. For the adenomyosis tissues, a peak caused by upsilon(C--C) skeletal-alpha helix is obviously weaker than that in normal tissue, and the peak induced by delta(C--O) shifts from 1160 cm(-1) in normal tissues to 1173 cm(-1) in the adenomyosis tissues. Thus, it was demonstrated that the technology of Raman spectroscopy is available for distinguishing different pathological uterine tissues at molecular level. This study is not only helpful on early diagnosis of uterine diseases, but also very crucial for the basic research on uterine diseases. And the Raman spectroscopy technology based on optic-fibers has a potential to evolve into a highly sensitive technology for diagnosis.