Exploratory Raman Spectroscopic Studies of Canine Oral Tumour Types

Canine cancers are becoming increasingly significant due to their natural occurrence, similar to the spontaneous cancers in humans as well as their histological and biological similarities to human cancers. Several oral cancer types have been witnessed in dogs, based on the cell type from which the tumour originates. The type of oral tumour dictates severity of the disease, treatment options and prognoses. The current tissue-based Raman Spectroscopy (RS) study explores stratification of canine cancers. Raman spectra of histopathologically confirmed normal and oral tumour types namely Epulis, Spindle cell sarcoma (SCS), and Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) were acquired using a Raman confocal microscope with 532 nm laser, pre-processed and multivariate analyses performed. PC-LDA achieved overall classification accuracy of > 70%. Thus, the present study evaluates potential of RS to identify the tumour type based on the identification of characteristic spectral features. Findings warrant large scale in vivo RS explorations in canine cancer subjects.