Ultrasensitive and nanoscale Raman spectroscopy in biomedicine

This paper is about a new methodological approach in spectroscopy, the Raman spectroscopy, which combines the interesting optical properties of nanostructures with modern laser spectroscopy. Ultra sensitive Raman measurements at the single molecule level for biomedically relevant molecules, such as DNA fragments, neurotransmitters, proteins, as well as surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) studies in single living cells are reported and potential capabilities and limitations of spectroscopies exploiting local optical fields of nanostructures in the biomedical field are discussed