Our recent work on the detection of explosives by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is reviewed in this paper. We have studied the physical mechanism of laser-induced plasma of an organic explosive, TNT. The LIBS spectra of TNT under single-photon excitation are simulated using MATLAB. The variations of the atomic emission lines intensities of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen versus the plasma temperature are simulated too. We also investigate the time-resolved LIBS spectra of a common inorganic explosive, black powder, in two kinds of surrounding atmospheres, air and argon, and find that the maximum value of the O atomic emission line SBR of black powder occurs at a gate delay of 596 ns. Another focus of our work is on using chemometic methods such as principle component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) to distinguish the organic explosives from organic materials such as plastics. A PLS-DA model for classification is built. TNT and seven types of plastics are chosen as samples to test the model. The experimental results demonstrate that LIBS coupled with the chemometric techniques has the capacity to discriminate organic explosive from plastics.

As a famous spectroscopy method for substance detection and classification, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is not a nondestructive detection method. Considering the precious samples and the experimental environment, sometimes it is difficult to get enough spectra to build the classification model, which is important for qualitative analysis. In this paper, a spectral generation method for extending the spectral database of LIBS is proposed based on generative adversarial nets (GAN). After enough interactive training, the generated spectra looked very similar to the experimental spectra. Evaluated with unsupervised clustering methods PCA and K-means, the generated spectra could not be distinguished from the real spectra. For each type of sample, most of the simulated spectra and experimental spectra were clustered into the same class, which meant the proposed method was effective to extend the spectral database. Using the spectral database extended by this method as training set data to build the SVM model, the results showed that when there were only a few experimental spectra, the combination of the generated spectra and the experimental spectra for building the classification model could achieve better identification results.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a promising element detection technique that has been rapidly developed for use in various applications, including the biomedical field. The technique has strong potential to analyze molecularly complex clinical specimens, for instance, human and animal soft tissues. In this work, we review the applications of LIBS in the classification and identification of soft tissues with emphasis on sample preparation and data processing. These applications can be divided into two categories, namely, pathological diagnosis and physiological detection. LIBS has been successfully used to distinguish ex vivo malignant and normal tissues, and classify the different normal tissues. Thus, LIBS may be an effective tool with potential applications in cancer diagnosis and laser surgery. This review then suggests possible development directions for further research on LIBS testing of soft tissue based on our summary and analysis of key results. Extensive studies should be implemented in a manner consistent with clinical requirements to expand the practical applications of LIBS in the future.

Due to the new demonstrations of Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) applicability in a surprisingly wide variety of applications, the use of LIBS as a medical diagnostic tool is steadily gaining momentum. Especially in different cancer diseases, LIBS has the potential to become a fast and valuable analytical tool. We addressed LIBS equipment and quantitative analytical procedures, and signal enhancement techniques for improving element detection. For detailed aspects of applications, we reviewed the recent progress of LIBS in different cancer diseases diagnoses by using different tissues and medical fluid as samples. To fulfill the high demands in the medical industry and overcome the severe tissue sample problem, it is proposed that the chemometric and signal amplification techniques for quantitative analysis should be employed, and robust and effective LIBS devices should be developed. This overview of the different cancers by LIBS is meant to summarize the research performed to date and suggest some suitable advanced chemometrics techniques and effective LIBS devices, if successfully implemented, would be significantly beneficial to the medical field in the future.