A system and method of correlating Raman measurements with digital images
of a sample so as 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, the 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.