Chemometrics of Cells and Tissues Using IR Spectroscopy – Relevance in Biomedical Research

Biochemical analyses of substances rely upon the ability of techniques to identify qualitatively and quantitatively the components present and are based on physicochemical characteristics as well as chemical nature of substances being detected. While chemical analyses usually depend on reactions of a given substance and can be destructive, spectral studies are usually non-destructive and deal with describing a substance based on properties like absorption or transmission of light (e.g. UV, Visible, Infrared (IR)), light scattering ability, fluorescence /phosphorescence using various optical techniques. Thus, the technique (Fourier transform infrared) spectroscopy has gained prominence in both research and applications in different fields of science. Among the various techniques, IR spectroscopy owing to its lower potency of causing damage compared to X-rays, gamma rays and UV rays (as it is based on weak vibrational energies) has become the technique of choice during chemical analysis of substances. IR spectroscopy can not only provide information about the various components in a complex material but is also unique in its ability to be modified into different kinds of instrumentations based on requirement. The various IR spectroscopy based instruments from a simple IR based spectroscope that helps to obtain the absorbance spectra of a chemical compound to the complex imaging systems that employ computational methods in addition to the technical sophistication are based on a simple principle that every compound or a particular combination of compounds can be described by means of a FTIR (Fourier transform infra red) spectra qualitatively and quantitatively.