A system and method of correlating Raman measurements with digital images
of a sample so to classify the sample's disease state. A spectroscopic
data set is obtained for the sample positioned in the field of view of a
spectroscopic device. With the sample removed from the field of view, the
sample is treated with a contrast enhancing agent. The treated sample is
repositioned in the spectroscopic device's field of view and a digital
image of the treated sample is obtained. The spectroscopic data set is
linked with the digital image by defining a transformation to map the
image spatial coordinates of the digital image to the spectral spatial
coordinates of the spectroscopic data. For the spectroscopic data set of
the sample, a database is searched to identify a spectroscopic data set,
of a known sample having well characterized pathology, which matches the
sample's spectroscopic data set.