
Light Through Skin Reveals Bone Fragility
A finger is illuminated with a laser beam, and some of the light returns after traveling inside. That's how Raman spectroscopy works: molecules in bone and skin alter the color of the reflected beam differently, leaving their chemical fingerprints. But skin, muscle, and fat are noisy: their signal drowns out the bone's, like a crowd's chatter overpowering a single singer.