Shupeng Liu

Gold Nanoparticles-Modified Tapered Fiber Nanoprobe for Remote SERS Detection

This letter presents a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanoprobe based on gold nanoparticles-modified tapered optical fiber and demonstrates its ability to perform remote Raman detection. The nanoscale tapered fiber with the tip size of 40.7 nm was made by heated pulling and chemical etching methods. The gold nanoparticles, prepared beforehand by the Frens method with a microwave heating process, were deposited on the tapered surface of the nanoprobe with the electrostatic self-assembly technology. Raman spectra of Rhodamine 6G (R6G) molecules were measured, using this SERS nanoprobe in an optrode remote detection mode. Considerably high signal-to-noise ratio and high sensitivity were achieved. The detection limit for R6G aqueous solution reaches 10-8 mol/L.

SERS detection of expired tetracycline hydrochloride with an optical fiber nano-probe

In this paper, we have developed a Raman spectroscopy analytical method for the analysis of tetracycline hydrochloride. Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) was carried out with optical fiber nano-probe coated nanoparticles. Both normal and expired tetracycline hydrochloride were analyzed in direct detection mode and remote detection mode. The results showed that the surface-enhanced Raman spectra could provide chemical information for distinguishing normal drugs from the expired ones. It has been demonstrated that the drug could be analyzed rapidly by SERS with the optical fiber nano-probe.

Evaluation of expressed prostatic secretion and serum using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for the noninvasive detection of prostate cancer, a preliminary study

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) involving expressed prostatic secretion (EPS) and serum was investigated; the objective was to determine if this approach could distinguish prostate cancer from benign prostatic hyperplasia. A total of 120 SERS spectra for EPS and 96 spectra for serum were gathered from patients within a prospective contemporary biopsy cohort. Significant differences in spectra between prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia were tentatively assigned to component changes in EPS and serum samples. Principal component analysis and linear discriminate analysis were utilized to evaluate the spectral data for EPS and serum, to build diagnostic algorithms. The leave-one-out cross-validation method was used to validate the diagnostic algorithms; it revealed diagnostic sensitivities of 75% and 60%, specificities of 75% and 76.5%, and accuracies of 75% and 68% for EPS and serum, respectively. The results suggest that EPS and serum SERS analysis could be a potential tool for prostate cancer detection.

Distinguishing Cancerous Liver Cells Using Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy:

Raman spectroscopy has been widely used in biomedical research and clinical diagnostics. It possesses great potential for the analysis of biochemical processes in cell studies. In this article, the surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) of normal and cancerous liver cells incubated with SERS active substrates (gold nanoparticle) was measured using confocal Raman microspectroscopy technology. The chemical components of the cells were analyzed through statistical methods for the SERS spectrum. Both the relative intensity ratio and principal component analysis (PCA) were used for distinguishing the normal liver cells (QSG-7701) from the hepatoma cells (SMMC-7721). The relative intensity ratio of the Raman spectra peaks such as I937/I1209, I1276/I1308, I1342/I1375, and I1402/I1435 was set as the judge boundary, and the sensitivity and the specificity using PCA method were calculated. The results indicated that the surface-enhanced Raman spectrum could provide the chemical information for distinguishing the normal cells from the cancerous liver cells and demonstrated that SERS technology possessed the possible applied potential for the diagnosis of liver cancer.

In vivo experiments of laser thermotherapy on liver tissue with FBG temperature distribution sensor

In this paper, we report an in vivo experimental study of liver tissue during Laser Induced Interstitial Thermotherapy (LITT). Single FBG was used in the experiments to measure the temperature distribution profile of the bio tissue in real time. Ideally, the goal of LITT is to kill pathological tissue thoroughly and minimize its damage to surrounding healthy tissue, especially vital organs. The extent of treated tissue damage in the therapy is mainly dependent on the irradiation time and the laser power density at the tissue surface. Therefore, monitoring the dynamic change of the exact temperature distribution of the tissue is a key point for the safety of this treatment. In our experiments, FBG was embedded in the laser irradiated bio tissues and used as fully distributed temperature sensor. During the therapy, its reflection spectra were recorded and transmitted to PC in real time. The temperature profile along the FBG axial was reconstructed from its reflection spectrum by the spectra inversion program running on the PC. We studied the dependence of the temperature distribution and the laser output power experimentally and compared the results of in vivo and in vitro under similar laser irradiating conditions. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method. Due to influence of body temperature, the in vivo measured temperature is higher than the in vitro one with an almost constant temperature difference value, but the slope and trend of the measured temperature curves in vivo and in vitro are almost identical.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy of serum accurately detects prostate cancer in patients with prostate-specific antigen levels of 4–10 ng/mL

The surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) of blood serum was investigated to differentiate between prostate cancer (PCa) and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) in males with a prostate-specific antigen level of 4–10 ng/mL, so as to reduce unnecessary biopsies. A total of 240 SERS spectra from blood serum were acquired from 40 PCa subjects and 40 BPH subjects who had all received prostate biopsies and were given a pathological diagnosis. Multivariate statistical techniques, including principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) diagnostic algorithms, were used to analyze the spectra data of serum from patients in control (CTR), PCa and BPH groups; results offered a sensitivity of 97.5%, a specificity of 100.0%, a precision of 100.0% and an accuracy of 99.2% for CTR; a sensitivity of 90.0%, a specificity of 97.5%, a precision of 94.7% and an accuracy of 98.3% for BPH; a sensitivity of 95.0%, a specificity of 93.8%, a precision of 88.4% and an accuracy of 94.2% for PCa. Similarly, this technique can significantly differentiate low- and high-risk PCa with an accuracy of 92.3%, a specificity of 95% and a sensitivity of 89.5%. The results suggest that analyzing blood serum using SERS combined with PCA–LDA diagnostic algorithms is a promising clinical tool for PCa diagnosis and assessment.

Remote detection of the surface-enhanced Raman spectrum with the optical fiber nanoprobe

Optical fiber nanoprobe with gold nanoparticles substrate on the surface was prepared by electrostatic self-assembly technology. Surface-enhanced Raman spectrum of the cells was measured using the optical fiber nanoprobe by remote detection method and direct detection method using confocal Raman micro-spectroscopy. The spectrum were analyzed with the detailed chemical components. The remote detection method using the optical fiber nanoprobe could make the probe inserting into the cells or tissue, and that may be helpful for the online SERS measurement of the cells in the biomedical research and diagnosis in the future.

Fabrication of fiber-optic EFPI with double-layer SU-8 diaphragm

In this paper, we fabricated fiber-optic extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric (EFPI) sensors with photolithography . The sensor has double-layer SU-8 diaphragm: one is the pressure transduction layer; the other is cavity control layer. Since SU-8 material has a low Youngs modulus, high pressure sensitivity can be achieved with SU-8 diaphragm. The EFPI were formed by a single mode fiber and a double-layer SU-8 diaphragm. To improve the fringe contrast, gold mirrors with a reflectivity of 50% were evaporated onto the end face of the single mode fiber and the inner face of the SU-8 diaphragm respectively. Experiments were done to estimate the performance of the sensor for static pressure measurement. The results show that an expected cavity length of the sensor was obtained and the EFPI sensor has a good linearity from 100 to 2500 Pa with 100 Pa resolution and a sensitivity of 154.8 nm/kPa.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering spectra revealing the inter-cultivar differences for Chinese ornamental Flos Chrysanthemum : a new promising method for plant taxonomy

BackgroundFlos Chrysanthemi, as a part of Chinese culture for a long history, is valuable for not only environmental decoration but also the medicine and food additive. Due to their voluminously various breeds and extensive distributions worldwide, it is burdensome to make recognition and classification among numerous cultivars with conventional methods which still rest on the level of morphologic observation and description. As a fingerprint spectrum for parsing molecular information, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) could be a suitable candidate technique to characterize and distinguish the inter-cultivar differences at molecular level.ResultsSERS spectra were used to analyze the inter-cultivar differences among 26 cultivars of Chinese ornamental Flos Chrysanthemum. The characteristic peaks distribution patterns were abstracted from SERS spectra and varied from cultivars to cultivars. For the bands distributed in the pattern map, the similarities in general showed their commonality while in the finer scales, the deviations and especially the particular bands owned by few cultivars revealed their individualities. Since the Raman peaks could characterize specific chemical components, those diversity of patterns could indicate the inter-cultivar differences at the chemical level in fact.ConclusionIn this paper, SERS technique is feasible for distinguishing the inter-cultivar differences among Flos Chrysanthemum. The Raman spectral library was built with SERS characteristic peak distribution patterns. A new method was proposed for Flos Chrysanthemum recognition and taxonomy.

Carbon-coated magnetic particles increase tissue temperatures after laser irradiation

Purpose: This work focused on the investigation the hyperthermia performance of the carbon-coated magnetic particles (CCMPs) in laser-induced hyperthermia. Materials and methods: We prepared CCMPs using the organic carbonization method, and then characterized them with transmission electron microscopy (TEM), ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometry, vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). In order to evaluate their performance in hyperthermia, the CCMPs were tested in laser-induced thermal therapy (LITT) experiments, in which we employed a fully distributed fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor to profile the tissues dynamic temperature change under laser irradiation in real time. Results: The sizes of prepared CCMPs were about several micrometers, and the LITT results show that the tissue injected with the CCMPs absorbed more laser energy, and its temperature increased faster than the contrast tissue without CCMPs. Conclusions: The CCMPs may be of great help in hyperthermia applications.