Identification of GI cancers utilising rapid mid-infrared spectral imaging

Pathologists find it notoriously difficult to provide both inter- and intra-observer agreement on a diagnosis of early gastrointestinal cancers. Vibrational spectroscopic approaches have shown their value in providing molecular compositional data from tissue samples and therefore enabling the identification of disease specific changes, when combined with multivariate techniques. Mid-infrared microscopic imaging is undergoing rapid developments in sources, detectors and spectrometers. Here we explore the use of high magnification FTIR for GI cancers and consider how the MINERVA (MId- to NEaR infrared spectroscopy for improVed medical diAgnostics) project, which is developing discrete frequency IR imaging tools will enable histopathologists to obtain rapid molecular images form unstained tissue sections.