Development of a Raman micro-spectroscopy flow cell module

Tornado Spectral Systems（多伦多，ON）成立的目的是发明和商业化用于医疗和工业领域的新型光学技术。他们的主要光学方法是一种称为拉曼光谱的技术，该技术使用激光束对化学混合物进行非破坏性实时测量。Tornado的专有光学设计使其拉曼分析仪的功率比现有技术高10倍至30倍，因此定量拉曼测量可以比传统光学配置更快、更灵敏或更准确。然而，Tornado的技术只是血液样本分析解决方案的一部分。由于其化学和细胞结构，血液吸收大部分激光能量，而不是散射提供化学信息的波长移动的拉曼光子。这一事实有两个主要含义：（1）血液的拉曼信号比大多数其他类型的化学样品弱，（2）入射激光功率必须保持较低，以避免加热和损坏血液样品，较低的激光功率产生更弱的拉曼信号。由于血液分析经常在拉曼光谱中寻找非常细微的变化，这两个因素都严重限制了拉曼技术的适用性。与Tornado SpectralSystems合作，目前的提案旨在克服这些限制，并专注于开发一种新颖的流动池模块，用于将拉曼光谱转换为血液分析。该项目的持续时间将为六个月，这项工作将作为未来赠款申请的基础。

Tornado Spectral Systems (Toronto, ON) was founded to invent and commercialize novel optical technologiesfor applications in the medical and industrial sectors. Their primary optical method is a technique called Ramanspectroscopy, which uses a laser beam to perform non-destructive real-time measurements of chemicalmixtures. Tornado's proprietary optical designs enable their Raman analyzers to be 10x to 30x more powerfulthan the current state of the art, so quantitative Raman measurements can be made more quickly, moresensitively, or more accurately than with conventional optical configurations. However, Tornado's technologyis only one part of the solution in the case of analysis of blood samples. Due to its chemical and cellularstructure, blood absorbs much of the laser energy rather than scattering the wavelength-shifted Raman photonswhich provide chemical information. This fact has two main implications: (1) the Raman signal from bloodwill be weaker than for most other types of chemical samples, and (2) the incident laser power must be keptlow to avoid heating and damaging the blood sample, and lower laser power produces even weaker Ramansignal. Since blood analysis is often looking for very subtle changes in the Raman spectrum, both of thesefactors can severely limit the applicability of Raman techniques. In collaboration with Tornado SpectralSystems, the current proposal aims to overcome these limitations and focuses on the development of a novelflow cell module for the translation of Raman spectroscopy to blood analysis. The duration of the project willbe six months and this work will serve as the foundation for future grant applications.