Evaluation of liver fibrosis using Raman spectroscopy and infrared thermography: A pilot study

Liver fibrosis is a pathological process that can escalate to cirrhosis and then liver failure, a major public health concern that affect hundreds of millions of people in both developed and developing countries. Detection of liver fibrosis during its earlier stages is a matter of great importance which may allow prevention of development of cirrhosis in patients with chronic liver disease. In this work, Raman spectroscopy and thermography were evaluated to detect early pathological signs of liver fibrosis in rats in which liver fibrosis was induced using carbon tetrachloride. Results show that Raman spectra of healthy and fibrotic livers significantly differ among each other and can be classified by principal component analysis and discriminant analysis. The PCA-LDA method has a sensitivity of 100%, specificity 85% and diagnostic accuracy of 93.5%. Thermography also revealed characteristic temperature patterns for fibrotic livers compared to healthy livers. Current data suggest that Raman spectroscopy and thermography could be used to detect fibrosis in ex vivo liver samples.