Ex vivo investigation of lower limb musculoskeletal tissues
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigation and validation of the biochemical compositions of lower limb musculoskeletal tissues using spatially-offset Raman spectroscopy
IRAS ID
336753
Contact name
Nai-Hao Yin
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Lancaster University
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
18/LO/1129, Previous study
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
A healthy lower limb musculoskeletal tissues is fundamental to one's well-being since it is closely related to the ambulatory function. In this region lies some superficial bony prominences, tendons, ligaments, and toenails that are excellent candidate for developing novel medical technologies that could directly study the tissue chemistry in vivo. Although imaging modalities can give a quick impression of the overall structural integrity and whether there is any significant damage, most of the overuse injuries in this region are caused by slow accumulating microdamage and/or related to age-related deterioration over multiple decades. There is a need for new technologies that could study molecular level tissue chemistry before significant structural changes happen for patients to benefit from early prevention.
This study aims to use the state-of-the-art spatially-offset Raman spectroscopy and measure the chemistry of the underlying tissues directly through skin. These data will then be validated by layer-by-layer dissection of the ex vivo limb and measure using conventional laboratory techniques. Finally, tissues will be excised and conduct biochemical and/or biomechanical tests and see whether the spectroscopy data correlates with these results.
In addition, a new methodology for producing structures in skin/other biological tissues can be done at significantly higher resolution than a typical tattoo. This should enable writing QR codes for patient identification (name, blood type, allergies, etc.) which would be useful to people injured and treated in challenging environments (e.g., front lines of war, national disaster). We want to do a proof of concept test on the samples we have from Science Care as this method has not been used on human skin before for this purpose.REC name
North West - Liverpool Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/NW/0090
Date of REC Opinion
26 Mar 2024
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion