Early diagnosis, monitoring and treatment selection of cancer represent major challenges in medicine. The definition of the complex clinical and molecular landscape of cancer requires the combination of multiple techniques and the investigation of multiple targets. As a result, diagnosis is normally lengthy, expensive and, in many cases, cannot be performed recursively. In recent years, optical biosensors, especially those based on the unique properties of plasmonic nanostructures, have emerged as one of the most exciting tools in nanomedicine, capable of overcoming key limitations of classical techniques. In this review, we specifically focus our attention on the latest advances in optical biosensors exploiting surface-enhanced Raman scattering encoded particles for the characterization of tumor single cells (molecular biology) and tissues (immunohistochemistry and guided surgery), as well as their application in guided surgery or even in bioimaging of living organisms.

中文翻译：

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SERS编码颗粒的癌症表征和诊断

癌症的早期诊断，监测和治疗选择是医学上的主要挑战。癌症的复杂临床和分子格局的定义需要多种技术的结合以及对多种靶标的研究。结果，诊断通常是漫长的，昂贵的，并且在许多情况下不能递归执行。近年来，光学生物传感器，尤其是那些基于等离子体纳米结构独特特性的生物传感器，已经成为纳米医学中最令人兴奋的工具之一，能够克服传统技术的关键限制。在这篇评论中