The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Raman spectroscopy in determination of changes in composition and structure of human tooth enamel with caries by use of new parameters such as the Raman band position, the full width at half maximum of Raman band and line shape of Raman band. The values of spectroscopic parameters were obtained by analysis of Raman scattering spectra. We proposed to base the diagnosis on several parameters determined by simultaneous analysis of Raman scattering, Rayleigh scattering and fluorescence emission. We verified the correlations between the values of the few selected parameters and the severity of dental caries. Raman band spectral parameters, such as position and line shape, can be useful to indicate the enamel caries changes. Moreover, it is possible to detect early caries by analysis of background in the Raman scattering spectrum related to the Rayleigh scattering and fluorescence emission. We demonstrated that a few independent parameters obtained by simultaneous analysis of three different physical phenomena could allow unambiguous determination of the early caries occurrence in the enamel. The published results give new insights into early caries detection and demonstrate the new possibilities of Raman spectroscopy as a diagnostic tool to recognize the caries disease. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.