【摘要】 当前全球范围内癌症发病率持续居高不下，癌症已成为严重威胁人类生命健康的重大疾病，而现有临床常用的癌症检测手段普遍存在明显的技术局限，这两方面关键因素共同驱动了新型无创诊断技术的研发进程与创新探索。太赫兹光谱和成像技术凭借非电离、对水分和介电属性敏感的特性成为癌症检测的潜在技术方向。本文系统地阐释了太赫兹时域光谱（THz-TDS）及太赫兹成像技术的核心工作机制与差异化应用特点及太赫兹传感技术的原理特性，梳理三类技术在皮肤癌、乳腺癌等浅表类癌症以及消化道癌、肝癌等内脏类癌症检测中的实践应用进展，明确了核心技术瓶颈和突破路径，并展望了太赫兹光谱和成像技术未来的发展方向，为推动该技术在癌症早期筛查中的发展提供参考。更多还原

【Abstract】 Significance Cancer has emerged as a major global health hazard, imposing an enormous burden on individual health, family wellbeing, and healthcare systems worldwide. According to the latest global cancer statistics, approximately 20 million new cases and 9.7 million cancer-related deaths were recorded globally in 2022, with incidence and mortality rates continuing to rise annually. In China, the situation is equally severe: 5.3293 million new cancer cases and 2.8129 million deaths were reported in 2021, making cancer one of the leading causes of death among Chinese residents. Early diagnosis is widely recognized as the key to improving patient prognosis and 5-year survival rates, as early-stage lesions are more responsive to treatment and less prone to metastasis. Nevertheless, conventional clinical detection methods have inherent limitations that restrict their utility in early screening: traditional imaging techniques such as CT and MRI lack sufficient spatial resolution to detect microlesions, and CT involves potential ionizing radiation risks, rendering it unsuitable for long-term follow-up; tissue biopsy is invasive, may cause patient trauma, and cannot enable real-time dynamic monitoring of lesion progression; and serum tumor marker detection exhibits low sensitivity and poor specificity, often resulting in missed or false diagnoses of early-stage lesions. Terahertz technology, which spans the frequency range between microwaves and infrared radiation, is characterized by non-ionizing properties, strong penetration through non-metallic materials, and high sensitivity to the moisture content, dielectric properties, and molecular structure of biological tissues. These unique advantages position terahertz technology as a promising non-invasive, label-free approach for cancer detection, with significant potential to overcome the limitations of current clinical methods and advance early cancer screening and precise diagnosis.Progress This paper systematically summarizes the core mechanisms, performance characteristics, technical optimization strategies, and recent application advances of three mainstream terahertz technologies—terahertz time-domain spectroscopy(THzTDS), terahertz imaging, and terahertz sensing—in cancer detection. THz-TDS, endowed with coherent detection capability, simultaneously acquires amplitude and phase information of terahertz waves transmitted through or reflected by samples, thereby enabling the derivation of key optical parameters such as the refractive index and absorption coefficient of biological tissues. It operates in two configurations—transmission and reflection modes—tailored to different sample types: transmission mode is suitable for thin specimens like tissue slices, whereas reflection mode is better suited for in vivo detection of superficial tissues to avoid sample damage. To enhance detection sensitivity, researchers have integrated metamaterials and nanomaterials(e. g., gold nanorods, graphene, quantum dots), which amplify the terahertz signal response through local surface plasmon resonance effects. Terahertz imaging combines spectroscopic analysis with spatial imaging, facilitating both structural visualization of lesions and optical parameter quantification of tissue properties, and encompasses three technical approaches: scanning imaging, real-time imaging, and near-field nanoscopy. Reflection scanning imaging offers high speed and stability, capturing high-contrast images of cancer lesions within 5 s at a spatial resolution of 0.3 mm; meanwhile, scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy(s-SNOM)-based near-field imaging overcomes the terahertz diffraction limit, achieving a resolution of 95 nm to resolve microstructural changes in cancer cells. Terahertz sensing primarily relies on metamaterial resonance and metasurface-assisted mechanisms, with detection performance flexibly tunable through structural optimization of the metamaterials(e.g., by adjusting the size, shape, and arrangement of resonant units to target specific frequency responses).In practical clinical applications, terahertz technologies have made remarkable progress in detecting various cancers, demonstrating excellent clinical translation potential. For skin cancer, portable terahertz systems enable non-invasive in vivo detection of superficial lesions, thereby avoiding biopsy-related trauma; moreover, the latest nanomaterial-modified high-sensitivity systems identify 50 μm microlesions with 92% accuracy, significantly outperforming traditional visual inspection and dermatoscopy. Regarding breast cancer, standardized detection procedures for formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded(FFPE) samples have been established, which differentiate cancerous from adjacent normal tissues via terahertz absorption spectrum analysis; furthermore, newly developed 3D terahertz imaging systems achieve tumor volume measurement error below 10%, providing reliable data for tumor staging. In gastrointestinal cancer, terahertz technology differentiates cancerous from normal mucosal tissues with 90%-100% sensitivity by detecting dielectric property changes and enables colorectal cancer staging through tumor invasion depth identification. For liver cancer, extensive experiments have identified a specific characteristic frequency band(0.835 THz); additionally, the latest antibodymodified terahertz biosensors achieve a 0.1 ng/m L detection limit for alpha-fetoprotein(a key liver cancer marker) with <5% crossreaction rate, demonstrating excellent specificity. Integrated approaches, such as terahertz-artificial intelligence(AI) and multi-modal fusion(combining terahertz with ultrasound, MRI, etc.), further enhance diagnostic accuracy and efficiency through intelligent analysis of terahertz spectral and imaging data.Conclusions and Prospects Terahertz spectroscopic imaging and sensing technologies have achieved a significant phased leap in cancer detection, advancing from laboratory-based basic feasibility verification to preliminary clinical application exploration. These techniques offer unique advantages—including non-invasiveness, label-free detection, high sensitivity, and multi-dimensional information acquisition—effectively addressing limitations of conventional detection methods and providing a novel technical pathway for early cancer screening, lesion localization, and pathological staging. However, several core technical bottlenecks impede their widespread clinical adoption: limited terahertz penetration depth in biological tissues(typically only a few millimeters) hinders deep tumor detection; conventional terahertz imaging lacks sufficient resolution to identify microlesions smaller than 10 μm; low signal specificity in complex biological environments renders measurements susceptible to interference from tissue moisture, blood flow, and other confounding factors; and the absence of standardized terahertz detection protocols leads to inconsistent experimental results across research groups. Future research should prioritize four key directions to overcome these challenges: first, elucidate the intrinsic interaction mechanisms between terahertz waves and cancerous tissues at molecular and cellular levels to establish quantitative models that predict pathological tissue characteristics from terahertz parameters; second, develop high-resolution terahertz near-field imaging and integrate it with microfluidic chips to enable microscale, precise detection of single cancer cells; third, optimize terahertz emission sources and detection devices to enhance system integration, miniaturization, and stability while reducing equipment costs; fourth, deeply integrate artificial intelligence to construct intelligent diagnostic models capable of automatically recognizing and classifying cancerous lesions based on terahertz spectral and imaging features. With advancing interdisciplinary convergence of physics, materials science, biomedicine, and AI, alongside breakthroughs in core technologies, terahertz spectroscopic imaging and sensing are poised to become a cornerstone tool for early cancer diagnosis, offering robust technical support to improve patient treatment outcomes and long-term prognosis.更多还原