Halliwell, Diane and Morais, Camilo L. M. and Gomes De Lima, Kassio Michell and Trevisan, Julio and Siggel-King, Michele R. F. and Craig, Tim and Ingham, James and Martin, David S. and Heys, Kelly and Kyrgiou, Maria and Mitra, Anita and Paraskevaidis, Evangelos and Theophilou, Georgios and Martin-Hirsch, Pierre Leonard and Cricenti, Antonio and Luce, Marco and Weightman, Peter and Martin, Francis Luke (2016) Imaging cervical cytology with scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) coupled with an IR-FEL. Scientific Reports, 6: 29494. ISSN 2045-2322
SciRep2016_SI.pdf - Accepted Version
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SciRep2016.pdf - Accepted Version
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Abstract
Cervical cancer remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality among women, especially in the developing world. Increased synthesis of proteins, lipids and nucleic acids is a pre-condition for the rapid proliferation of cancer cells. We show that scanning near-field optical microscopy, in combination with an infrared free electron laser (SNOM-IR-FEL), is able to distinguish between normal and squamous low-grade and high-grade dyskaryosis, and between normal and mixed squamous/glandular pre-invasive and adenocarcinoma cervical lesions, at designated wavelengths associated with DNA, Amide I/II and lipids. These findings evidence the promise of the SNOM-IR-FEL technique in obtaining chemical information relevant to the detection of cervical cell abnormalities and cancer diagnosis at spatial resolutions below the diffraction limit (≥0.2 μm). We compare these results with analyses following attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy; although this latter approach has been demonstrated to detect underlying cervical atypia missed by conventional cytology, it is limited by a spatial resolution of ~3 μm to 30 μm due to the optical diffraction limit.