FTIR Spectroscopy for cancer diagnosis. How can glass substrates be used to bring it closer to clinical practice?

Dowling, Lewis Michael Morgan

Abstract

Cancer incidence rates are increasing world-wide including in the UK. An increase in cancer cases puts further pressure on pathology departments that are often already struggling to meet targets to diagnose cancers in a timely manner. Delays in diagnosis will cause the delay of treatment being provided and worse patient outcomes. Current diagnostic methods for cancer rely on cytological/histological staining of biopsies and a diagnosis is made in a subjective manner by a pathologist. These methods are time consuming and require great expertise. New diagnostic methods are needed to help relieve pressures on pathology departments. There is a consensus that vibrational spectroscopy techniques have the potential to be tools that could aid in cancer diagnostics. Despite an increasingly growing body of research demonstrating how vibrational spectroscopy methods could be utilised for clinical diagnostics there has been several barriers to the translation of such methods.
The research in this thesis aims to investigate and demonstrate methodologies to utilise modes of infrared spectroscopy with glass substrates for lung and breast cancer diagnostics. One of the major barriers for the use of infrared spectroscopy in cancer diagnostics is the expense and difficulty of procurement of conventional substrates. This thesis aimed to investigate a methodology to use a glass coverslips substrate for the classification of lung and breast cancer cells using IR spectroscopy. Glass coverslips were used because of their affordability and accessibility, an important consideration for the translation of diagnostic methods.
In vitro cancer cell lines and healthy tissue derived cell lines were used to model this research to test the feasibility of the proposed methods. This research first investigated a sample preparation method for cytology samples to be analysed with FTIR spectroscopy. The next sections demonstrated the proposed method could be used to classify lung and breast cancer cells in-from non-malignant cells in-vitro using FTIR spectroscopy and a random forest classifier. The methodology was next used to demonstrate how FTIR spectroscopy could be used to identify individual lung cancer cells from leukocytes in mixed samples. This is the first time this has been demonstrated. Finally, related IR spectroscopy technique, O-PTIR spectroscopy, was investigated for how it could be used with glass slides for the classification of lung cancer cells from non-malignant cells. The research in this thesis has demonstrated that glass substrates are viable for the classification of lung and breast cancer cells with high accuracy using sample preparation methods that are commonplace in pathology laboratories for current diagnostic procedures.

Citation

Dowling, L. M. M. (2023). FTIR Spectroscopy for cancer diagnosis. How can glass substrates be used to bring it closer to clinical practice?. (Thesis). Keele University. Retrieved from https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/674513

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Dec 21, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 21, 2023
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/674513
• Award Date: 2023-12