The potential of raman spectroscopy as a monitoring tool for thermal therapy

Laser Interstitial thermal Therapy (LITT) is a minimally invasive technique for treating localized solid tumors through heating with light. LITT is not routinely employed in a clincal setting due to difficulties in real-time monitoring of tissue heating. This work investigates the feasibility of Raman Spectroscopy (RS) to monitor thermal therapies. RS has the ability to detect changes in the seconcary structure of proteins, and may prove useful as an indicator of tissue coagulation in real-time during thermal therapy. Tissue equivalent albumen phantoms were heated in a water bath and bovine muscle samples where heated in a water bath and through laser photocoagulation. Raman spectra were acquired after heating and increases in the overall Raman intensity and shifts in major band locations were observed after heating. Correlations between Raman intensity and thermal dose were also observed. These results indicate that RS may be employable as a real-time monitoring tool for LITT.