High-throughput discrimination of cancerous and noncancerous human cell lines by high-speed spontaneous Raman microscopy

We used only a narrow range, 1397-1501 cm-1, for high-throughput analysis of cancerous and noncancerous human cell lines by spontaneous Raman microscopy. With baseline-corrected cellwise spectra in this range, two cell lines were discriminated at accuracy higher than 90%. This narrowband measurement allowed reduction of the signal readout time by 24-folds in comparison to a correspondent wideband measurement detecting 536-3132 cm-1, enabling cell analysis at 2.5 cells/min. To further improve the throughput, we employed detector binning, which allowed reduction not just of the readout time but also of the signal accumulation time with maintaining signal-to-background ratio and the accuracy. Improvement of the imaging speed by this approach reached at 4-folds, enabling a high-throughout analysis at 10 cells/min.