Label-free optical sensor based on red blood cells laser tweezers Raman spectroscopy analysis for ABO blood typing.

The clinical significance of ABO blood typing extends beyond transfusion medicine and is demonstrated to be associated with susceptibility to various diseases, even including cancer. In this study, a home-made laser tweezers Raman spectroscopy (LTRS) system was applied to detect red blood cells (RBCs) with the aim to develop a label-free, simple and objective blood typing method for the first time. High-quality Raman spectra of RBCs in the fingerprint region of 420-1700 cm-1 can be obtained, meanwhile exciting blood typing results can be achieved, especially with an accuracy of 100% for identifying Type AB from other blood types with the use of multivariate statistical analysis based on principal component analysis (PCA) combined with linear discriminant analysis (LDA). This primary work demonstrates that the label-free RBCs LTRS analysis in conjunction with PCA-LDA diagnostic algorithms has great potential as a biosensor for ABO blood typing.