Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has unique advantages of rapidity, simplicity, and simultaneous multi-element detection. With these advantages, LIBS has become an important label-free, minimally destructive analytical tool for near-real-time multi-element and chemical information analysis in the biomedical field. LIBS generates a transient plasma and records its optical emission. It provides elemental fingerprints and, in some cases, information on molecular fragments, enabling rapid screening and discrimination in complex biological matrices. This work reviews the research progress of LIBS in recent years in three major fields: biological fluids analysis, biological tissue analysis, and pharmaceutical testing. Specifically, it summarizes its potential in screening trace elements and electrolyte/metal-ion abnormalities and characterizing metabolic markers in biofluids such as blood and urine. Additionally, this review systematically summarizes the applications of LIBS in pharmaceutical quality control, including formulation uniformity assessment, in vitro formulation comparison, and pharmaceutical efficacy evaluation. Finally, it discusses the main challenges for clinical translation, such as matrix effects, calibration and standardization, and the need for large-cohort external validation. Future directions, including multimodal integration, portable point-of-care devices, and standardized spectral databases, are also outlined.
Chen et al. (Sun,) studied this question.