Principal component analysis of Raman spectra of carbon nanotubes in cancer cells: accumulation, distribution, and type discrimination

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have a high potential for biomedical applications such as theranostics and image-guided drug delivery. Raman spectroscopy and microscopy are powerful tools to visualize and monitor the quality of CNTs and evaluate their distribution inside cells, providing valuable information for the development of effective carbon nanotube-based therapies. However, the features obtained from Raman spectra are quite dependent on each other, and their simultaneous presence is often redundant. In this study, Raman spectral mapping of C6 glioma cells accumulating two types of functionalized CNTs over time is performed, and principal component analysis is used to extract valuable information from big datasets of Raman spectra about specificity of CNT distribution, barely noticeable structural property modification, and intracellular degradation of CNTs.