Differential laser-induced perturbation Raman spectroscopy: A comparison with Raman spectroscopy for analysis and classification of amino acids and dipeptides

Differential-laser induced perturbation spectroscopy (DLIPS) is a new spectral analysis technique for classification and identification, with key potential applications for analysis of complex biomolecular systems. DLIPS takes advantage of the complex ultraviolet (UV) laser-material interactions based on difference spectroscopy by coupling low intensity UV laser perturbation with a traditional spectroscopy probe. Here, we quantify the DLIPS performance using a Raman scattering probe in classification of basic constituents of collagenous tissues, namely, the amino acids glycine, L-proline, and L-alanine, and the dipeptides glycine-glycine, glycine- alanine and glycine-proline and compare the performance to a traditional Raman spectroscopy probe via several multivariate analyses. We find that the DLIPS approach yields an ∼40% improvement in discrimination among these tissue building blocks. The effects of the 193-nm perturbation laser are further examined by assessing the photodestruction of targeted material molecular bonds. The DLIPS method with a Raman probe holds promise for future tissue diagnosis, either as a stand-alone technique or as part of an orthogonal biosensing scheme.