• Question: What are the potential applications of spectroscopy in medicine?

    Asked by Elinor to Laura, Matthew, Andrew on 20 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      MRI is one of the most important tools in medicine, as it can scan the brain to see if there are any abnormality. Other uses include X-rays to see if there are any broken bones but there are a lot more uses for it. A lot of blood analysis depends on spectroscopy, actually most analysis depends on a certain degree of spectroscopic techniques.

    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      There are loads of current applications in medicine, as Matthew said, MRI, x-ray, ultrasounds, and blood tests are all based on simple spectroscopic methods that we use all the time in a lab! Some lasers are also used in laser eye surgery and some cosmetic surgery and infra red light is used to treat some sports injuries (I was really excited when I hurt my knee and the physio used an infra red light on it!)
      I have no idea what future applications could involve but I hope they could be used more in treatments as well as the investigations they are used for now.

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      Spectroscopy is used all over the place in Medicine:

      Magnetic Resonance Imaging is the most readily thought of, and is functionally identical to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy – it allows us to look at how the water (specifically the hydrogens in water) is spread throughout the body – effectively showing an image of all the organs inside.

      Raman spectroscopy is being explored for the identification of cancerous cells; it can look at the ‘fingerprint’ of the combinations of molecules, and can identify cells which may potentially have cancerous tendancies. This would mean that bladder cancer could be detected right from a urine test.

      If you are in hospital, or you see a medical drama, you will see people with a ‘clip’ on their finger. This is a device that will measure heart rate and the oxygen saturation level in the blood by essentially measuring the absorption spectrum of the blood that passes through your finger.

      These are only a few of the uses – but really it is a varied as you would want to make it

Comments