Seeing red: microspectroscopy used to study blood through plastic

Renishaw's inVia confocal raman microscope is used to study blood stored in plastic blood bags

The Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia, Canada, is using raman spectroscopy as a tool for monitoring biochemical changes and inter-donor variability in stored red blood cell (RBC) units.

The research group of professors Michael Blades and Robin Turner recently published this work in The Analyst.

For this work the group collaborated with the Canadian Blood Services, using Raman microspectroscopy (RMS) to investigate the chemical changes that occur in red blood cells (RBC's), during storage in plastic bags, which could eventually be used as a quality check prior to transfusion.

The group illustrated how the inVia could be used to analyse bulk properties of a sample, both in a conventional microscopy mode, and with a laser offset by using the inVia's software controlled beam steering capabilities.

The laser and collection optics were purposely aligned to implement a spatially-offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) measurement at a set position, enabling analysis of the blood with minimal interference from the bag material.

In addition, the group study bio-analytical applications with RMS, in particular spatially resolved analyses using the Renishaw inVia.

To date, it has used RMS to characterise single cells and populations of cells in vitro as they respond to a variety of chemical and environmental stimuli, including those triggering differentiation, autophagy, necrosis and apoptosis.

It also uses RMS for the sub-cellular analyses of glycogen and nucleoli.

Turner said: "We now have two inVia systems operating in our lab and both are heavily used – mainly by us – but also by a growing number of external users on a fee-for-use basis.

"The robustness and ease of use of the inVia make it feasible to quickly train some of the more frequent external users so they can do their measurements without our personnel standing by.”

Turner added: "The platform is flexible and we have exploited that to, for example, implement a fluorescence imaging microscopy system that uses the same microscope and hence can be used to image the same sample by fluorescence and Raman, and to implement SORS.”