Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the notable advances related to vibrational techniques, and in particular FTIR spectroscopy, have provided very interesting results for medical diagnostics.

Infrared FTIR spectroscopy of cells and tissues is a growing research area in the field of biomedicine. In fact, numerous studies on the spectroscopic characteristics of biological molecules in tissues have made applications of FTIR spectroscopy increasingly important in diagnostic medicine. With the application of FTIR spectroscopy, it is possible to define biochemical changes that occur in healthy cells when they "get sick". All of this occurs due to the analysis of individual cellular biochemical components, such as DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids and carbohydrates. Spectra of biological samples are a superposition of all contributions from each biochemical component, and thus can provide a molecular diagnosis by defining a "biochemical fingerprint" of the genome, proteome and metabolome of cells or tissues, which can be used in different clinical conditions caused by inflammatory lesions following cancer diagnosis. To date, the identification of morphological changes under a light microscope for the diagnosis of a disease depends on the experience of the observer. FTIR spectroscopy offers an interesting alternative for detecting biochemical changes with a relatively inexpensive, non-subjective technique since it does not require tissue/cellular fixation and, more significantly, does not depend on the observer's judgment to detect cellular/molecular changes. Furthermore, it considerably helps to diagnose borderline, indeterminate or false-negative cases as it detects early changes in the molecular vibrational spectra characteristic of cells.

The Special Issue of Chemosensors will focus on the development and practical applications of spectral and optical sensing techniques, such as FTIR and FTIR imaging, Raman microspectroscopy, ATR-FTIR attenuated total reflectance spectroscopy, and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. Original research papers focusing on the development and methodology of spectral detection and experimental verification using these computer-integrated techniques will be greatly appreciated. We also welcome articles on data analysis techniques, such as PCA-LDA and PLS-DA, for the classification of vibrational spectra and on the development of algorithms, such as those based on machine learning. Both literature review articles and original research papers will be published. Literature review articles should provide an up-to-date overview of state-of-the-art advances in these fields and include key findings from other research groups. We welcome and look forward to your participation in this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Maria Lasalvia
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• FTIR and FTIR-imaging
• Raman microspectroscopy
• ATR-FTIR
• near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy
• cell/tissue and biochemical fingerprint
• PCA-LDA, PLS-DA
• machine learning