Spatially offset Raman spectroscopy

There have also been advancements in the development of deep non-invasive medical diagnosis using SORS with the hopes of being able to detect breast tumors.

Raman spectroscopy relies on inelastic scattering events of monochromatic light to produce a spectrum characteristic of a sample.

Importantly, the spectrum produced by a mixture forms a linear combination of the component spectra, enabling relative chemical content to be determined in a simple spectroscopic measurement using chemometric analysis.

The basic SORS technique was invented and developed by Pavel Matousek, Anthony Parker and collaborators at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK.

To do this without using an offset measurement would be severely restricted by photon shot noise generated by Raman and fluorescence signals originating from the surface layer.

This has several advantages, including lowering the total power density and allowing simple manipulation of offset distance.