Interpreting the biochemical specificity of mouse spinal cord by confocal raman microspectral imaging

Interpreting the biochemical specificity of spinal cord tissue is the essential requirement for understanding the biochemical mechanisms during spinal-cord-related pathological course. In this work, a longitudinal study was implemented to reveal a precise linkage between the spectral features and the molecular composition in ex vivo mouse spinal cord tissue by microspectral Raman imaging. It was testified that lipid-rich white matter could be distinguished from gray matter not only by the lipid Raman peaks at 1064, 1300, 1445 and 1660cm-1, but also by protein (1250 and 1328cm-1) and saccharides (913 and 1137cm-1) distributions. K-means cluster analysis was further applied to visualize the morphological basis of spinal cord tissue by chemical components and their distribution patterns. Two-dimensional chemical images were then generated to visualize the contrast between two different tissue types by integrating the intensities of the featured Raman bands. All the obtained results illustrated the biochemical characteristics of spinal cord tissue, as well as some specific substance variances between different tissue types, which formed a solid basis for the molecular investigation of spinal cord pathological alterations. © 2017 The Author(s).