Raman Hyperspectral Imaging of Nanofibers for Tissue Engineering Applications

Nanofiber scaffolds play a crucial role in bioengineering by providing structural support for tissue and organoid growth. For composite nanofibers, optimizing their properties for specific applications often requires analyzing the spatial distribution of their chemical structure. This review focuses on the applications of Raman hyperspectral imaging to the mapping of the chemical composition of nanofibers. While the technique is diffraction-limited to the size of the scanning beam, it is possible to decipher the nanoscale features of these fibers by employing oversampling during scanning. Subsequently, these oversampled data can be analyzed by a singular-value decomposition (SVD) analysis and classical least-squares (CLS) decomposition. In many cases, this technique is essential for verifying the spatial distribution of different chemical components within multi-component nanofibers.