[The application of Fourier transform infrared technology in biomedical sphere]

The authors systemically reviewed the development of FTIR technology and its innovative advances during the past fifty years. FTIR technique was once abandoned after initial exploration in biomedical fields, which could not confirm its reliability and credibility. After technological innovation and refined numerical analysis methods, FTIR technique has been applied to a wide range of fields, from single cellular to the complex biomedical tissue components. Nowadays, mature and advanced FTIR technology, such as FTIR microspectrometer and FTIR imaging system, with the aid of pattern recognition and tissue microarray, greatly facilitated the large parallel scale investigation of molecular structure. The recent development of FTIR spectroscopic imaging has enhanced our capability to examine, on a microscopic scale, the spatial distribution of vibrational spectroscopic signatures of materials spanning the physical and biomedical disciplines. The integration of instrumentation development, theoretical analyses to provide guidelines for imaging practice, novel data processing algorithms, and the introduction of the technique to new fields. FTIR technique has helped analyze the complex components of bile stones, which persisted to be a vexing problem and causing high death rate in China. Besides, FTIR technology could provide reliable information in discriminating benign and malignancy. It has been used in detecting thyroid nodules, mammary gland, gastrointestinal tract, cardiovascular and prostate diseases, and parotid gland tissue in combination with ATR detecting device, and has broad clinical application prospects. Till now, FTIR technology has achieved the fast and accurate diagnosis for freshly dissected tissues such as discriminating thyroid carcinoma from nodular goiter intraoperatively. However, further investigations need to be done in this sphere to achieve greater accomplishments.