Infrared Spectroscopy of Cells and Tissues: Shining Light onto a Novel Subject

Abstract

T his focal point article aims to introduce the readers to a new spectroscopic endeavor, infrared spectroscopy of entire cells and tissues, and to present an overview of the results from, and the potential of, this research. The ® eld has seen quite a bit of activity, as judged by the number of papers published and patents ® led. But unfortunately, the level of activity in a ® eld is no measure of the quality of the work published: the earlier reports of ``detecting cancer’ ’ by comparing infrared spectra of healthy and diseased samples were sometimes based on rather naive interpretations of the observations and bypassed all ground