Science & Technology - Posted by Jade Boyd-Rice on Thursday, June 24, 2010 14:00 - 7 Comments 
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(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...Consumer-grade camera detects cancer cells
Researchers can easily distinguish cancer cells from healthy cells in photos of tissue samples taken with a $400 Olympus E-330 camera. The images are captured with a fiber-optic cable. The tip of the cable, which is about as wide as a pencil lead, can be applied directly to the inside of the cheek. (Credit: D. Shin/Rice University)
RICE (US)—Using an off-the-shelf digital camera, researchers have created an inexpensive device that is powerful enough to let doctors easily distinguish cancerous cells from healthy cells simply by viewing the LCD monitor on the back of the camera.
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The results of the first tests of the camera were published online in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.
“Consumer-grade cameras can serve as powerful platforms for diagnostic imaging,” says Rice University professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the study’s lead author. “Based on portability, performance and cost, you could make a case for using them both to lower health care costs in developed countries and to provide services that simply aren’t available in resource-poor countries.”
Richards-Kortum’s team has developed fluorescent dyes and targeted nanoparticles that let doctors zero in on the molecular hallmarks of cancer.
In the new study, the team captured images of cells with a small bundle of fiber-optic cables attached to a $400 Olympus E-330 camera.
When imaging tissues, Richards-Kortum’s team applied a common fluorescent dye that caused cell nuclei in the samples to glow brightly when lighted with the tip of the fiber-optic bundle. Three tissue types were tested: cancer cell cultures that were grown in a lab, tissue samples from newly resected tumors, and healthy tissue viewed in the mouths of patients.
Because the nuclei of cancerous and precancerous cells are notably distorted from those of healthy cells, Richards-Kortum says, abnormal cells were easily identifiable, even on the camera’s small LCD screen.
“The dyes and visual techniques that we used are the same sort that pathologists have used for many years to distinguish healthy cells from cancerous cells in biopsied tissue,” says study coauthor Mark Pierce, Rice faculty fellow in bioengineering. “But the tip of the imaging cable is small and rests lightly against the inside the cheek, so the procedure is considerably less painful than a biopsy and the results are available in seconds instead of days.”
Richards-Kortum says software could be written that would allow medical professionals who are not pathologists to use the device to distinguish healthy from nonhealthy cells. The device could then be used for routine cancer screening and to help oncologists track how well patients were responding to treatment.
“A portable, battery-powered device like this could be particularly useful for global health,” she says. “This could save many lives in countries where conventional diagnostic technology is simply too expensive.”
Researchers from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center also contributed to the work, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
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7 Comments
Jerry Butler
How does a view of this diameter distinguish individual cells
KEN LEVY
How soon will this be in the hands of the pathologist? So I can be spared over or under treatment.
Mark Pierce
Thank you for the comments – to briefly respond to each:
Jen – We are carrying out studies using this imaging system with clinicians specializing in oral cancer, cervical cancer, esophageal cancer, and colon cancer. By building up a larger collection of images with independent diagnosis made by traditional pathology methods, we hope to establish the characteristic differences in cell size and shape between normal tissue and cancer.
Jerry – This system has a field of view of 0.75 mm diameter. The size of a typical cell that we are looking at is approzimately 0.03-0.05 mm. If you look at figure 4 in the PLoS article (the link is above), hopefully you can see the difference between normal and cancer cells. Cell nuclei appear as small green dots in the images. In normal tissue, the cell nuclei are small and well spaced apart. In cancerous tissue, nuclei tend to become larger and more crowded together.
Ken – As I mentioned in my reply to Jen, we are currently carrying out larger studies with this system to establish its diagnostic performance in several different cancer types. Hopefully it will be in the hands of the pathologist soon.
But are you using optical microscopy in the light path, or are you somehow using the camera’s or other electronic means to magnify the field?
Mark Pierce
Warner – We use a 1 millimeter diameter fiber optic cable to transmit an image from the tissue site (inside the mouth in this case) to the object plane of our camera system. We replaced the Olympus camera’s traditional lens with our own lenses to optically magnify the image of the fiber optic by 19.5x onto the image sensor.
Mark Pierce
Jonathan
This and many other contrbutions opens up debate on pricing of medical equipment. Parties involved include the electronic components manufacturers (ECM), medical equipment manufacturers (MEM) and medical technology licensing (MDL) bodies such as FDA.
1. At the ECM level, electronics is graded for consumer, industrial, military and medical use. What informs this grading system? I guess medical and military grade electronics is priced higher, why?.
2. At ECM level how is the final price computed? This is important noting that some manufacturers have agreed to package low cost version of their equipment for certain target market mostly based on ‘technical economics (TE)’. Based on my experience in industry, TE involves finding a suitable low priced substitute that will not compromise functionality/performance inorder to bring down the price of the final product. In the case of the present article TE would be realised by using a consumer grade camera in place of the expensive medical grade canera. Te most obvious question is what is being sacrified in terms of functionality and performance?
3. Licensing comes at a cost and it is only natural for any business to try and recover the licensing expenses. Can licensing be achieved cheaply and if so how?
This is a challenging debate since both medical and military technologies concerns life and death.
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I am interested to know what kind(s) of cancer this applies to. How are they identified? By eye or through some shape/color recognition?