We investigated the feasibility of identifying different types of bacterial growth medium using a handheld Raman instrument with a proprietary baseline correction algorithm. Our data suggest that this instrument is capable of differentiating multiple types of growth medium and readily detects the change in the Raman signal when bacteria are present in the growth medium. These findings support the notion that a handheld Raman spectrometer may be used to distinguish highly-fluorescent biological samples without the use of surface-enhanced Raman scattering.
