Discrimination of Healthy and Cancerous Colon Cells Based on FTIR Spectroscopy and Machine Learning Algorithms

Colorectal cancer was one of the most frequent causes of death due to cancer in 2020. Current diagnostic methods, based on colonoscopy and histological analysis of biopsy specimens, are partly dependent on the operator’s skills and expertise. In this study, we used Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and different machine learning algorithms to evaluate the performance of such method as a complementary tool to reliably diagnose colon cancer. We obtained FTIR spectra of FHC and CaCo-2 cell lines originating from healthy and cancerous colon tissue, respectively. The analysis, based on the intensity values of specific spectral structures, suggested differences mainly in the content of lipid and protein components, but it was not reliable enough to be proposed as diagnostic tool. Therefore, we built six machine learning algorithms able to classify the two different cell types: CN2 rule induction, logistic regression, classification tree, support vector machine, k nearest neighbours, and neural network. Such models achieved classification accuracy values ranging from 87% to 100%, sensitivity from 88.1% to 100%, and specificity from 82.9% to 100%. By comparing the experimental data, the neural network resulted to be the model with the best performance parameters, having excellent values of accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity both in the low-wavenumber range (1000–1760 cm−1) and in the high-wavenumber range (2700–3700 cm−1). These results are encouraging for the application of the FTIR technique, assisted by machine learning algorithms, as a complementary diagnostic tool for cancer detection.