Demonstrating the application of Raman spectroscopy together with chemometric technique for screening of asthma disease

Medical biophotonic tools provide new sources of diagnostic information regarding the state of human health that are used in managing patient care. In our current study, Raman spectroscopy, together with the chemometric technique, has successfully been demonstrated for the screening of asthma disease. Raman spectra of sera samples from asthmatic patients as well as healthy (control) volunteers have been recorded at 532 nm excitation. In healthy sera, three highly reproducible Raman peaks assigned to β-carotene have been detected. Their sensitive detection is facilitated due to the resonance Raman effect. In contrast, in asthmatic patients sera, the peaks assigned to β-carotene are either diminished or suppressed accompanied by other new Raman peaks. These new peaks most probably arise due to an elevated level of proteins, which could be used to identify/differentiate between asthma and non-asthma samples. Furthermore, a partial least squares discrimination analysis (PLS-DA) model was developed and applied on the Raman spectra of diseased as well as healthy samples, which successfully classified them. The correlation coefficient (r2) of the model was determined as 0.965. Similarly, the root mean square errors in cross-validation (RMSECV) and in the prediction (RMSECP) are 0.09 and 0.25, respectively. PLS-DA has the potential to be incorporated in a microcontroller’s code attached with a hand-held Raman spectrometer for screening purposes in asthma, which is a disease of great concern for the clinicians, especially in children.