Comparison of broadband-CARS and spontaneous Raman scattering for blood cell analysis

Abstract

The capability of Raman spectroscopy for biological cell classification has been previously reported and is shown to be well suited for research purposes. The implementation in the clinical setting for such tasks as cell counting and pathology is prohibited by the required acquisition time due to the low scattering cross section present. In this work, we present a study on the capability of broadband coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (BCARS) using a fiber laser, for white blood cell analysis. The improvements in acquisition time afforded by the coherent process in BCARS could potentially allow for hyperspectral imaging and cell classification or cellomics, but there are known drawbacks in BCARS such as the quadratic concentration dependence and nonresonant background. We provide some initial results on comparing the spontaneous Raman spectrum of a plasmacytoid dendritic cell line, with the corresponding BCARS spectrum. We offer an approach whereby a single BCARS spectrum can be obtained for a single cell from a hyperspectral image, for the purpose of a potential downstream cell classification.