Classification of formalin-fixed bladder cancer cells with laser tweezer Raman spectroscopy

Bladder cancer is a common cancer that is relatively hard to detect at an early stage because of its nonobvious symptoms. It is known that bladder cells can be found in urine samples which potentially could be used for early detection of bladder cancer. Raman spectroscopy is a powerful non-invasive tool for accessing biochemical information of cells. Combined with laser tweezers, to allow isolation of single cells, Raman spectroscopy has been used to characterise a number of bladder cells that might be found in a urine sample. Using principal component-canonical variates analysis (PC-CVA) and k-fold validation, the results shows that the invasive bladder cancer cells can be identified with accuracy greater than 87%. This demonstrates the potential of developing an early detection method that identifies the invasive bladder cancer cells in urine samples.