Raman microspectroscopy for visualization of peripheral nerves

The peripheral nervous system plays an important role in motility, sensory, and autonomic functions of the human body. Preservation of peripheral nerves in surgery is essential for improving quality of life of patients. To preserve peripheral nerves, detection of ne peripheral nerves that cannot be identi ed by human eye or under white light imaging is necessary. In this study, we sought to provide a proof-of-principle demonstration of a label-free detection technique of peripheral nerve tissues against adjacent tissues that employs spontaneous Raman microspectroscopy. A line-illumination confocal Raman microscope was used for the experiment. A laser operating at the wavelength of 532 nm was used as an excitation laser light. We obtained Raman spectra of peripheral nerve, brous connective tissue, skeletal muscle, blood vessel, and adipose tissue of Wistar rats, and extracted speci c spectral features of peripheral nerves and adjacent tissues. By applying multivariate image analysis, peripheral nerves were clearly detected against adjacent tissues without any preprocessing neither xation nor staining. These results suggest the potential of the Raman spectroscopic observation for noninvasive and label-free nerve detection, and we expect this method could be a key technique for nerve-sparing surgery.