Raman spectroscopy for cartilage damage severity, degradation and repair assessment.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common rheumatic disease, characterized by progressive cartilage degradation. Current gold-standard diagnosis present limitations for detecting early stages of the disease, apart from being subjective to the reader. Raman spectroscopy (RS) has been recently described as a label-free, non-invasive tool to detect chemical and molecular changes in cartilage, producing a unique fingerprint of the tissue. This technique presents high potential as early diagnosis tool, promoting the discovery of optical biomarkers. Moreover, due to its specificity, RS could also be applied as a tool to monitor clinical outcomes as well as preconditioning of cell- or scaffold-based regenerative medicine therapies for cartilage repair and OA.