Bye, Bye Biopsy? Team at Stevens Institute of Technology uses millimeter-wave imaging to slash rate of unnecessary biopsies
From: Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, N.J. – May 4, 2022 -- Skin biopsies are no
fun: doctors carve away small lumps of tissue for laboratory testing, leaving
patients with painful wounds that can take weeks to heal. That’s a price worth
paying if it enables early cancer treatment. However, in recent years,
aggressive diagnostic efforts have seen the number of biopsies grow around
four times faster than the number of cancers detected, with about 30
benign lesions now biopsied for every case of skin cancer that’s found.
Researchers at Stevens
Institute of Technology are now developing a low-cost handheld device that
could cut the rate of unnecessary biopsies in half and give dermatologists and
other frontline physicians easy access to laboratory-grade cancer diagnostics.
“We aren’t trying to get rid of biopsies,” said Negar Tavassolian, director of
the Bio-Electromagnetics Laboratory at Stevens. “But we do want to give doctors
additional tools and help them to make better decisions.”
The team’s device uses
millimeter-wave imaging — the same technology used in airport security scanners
— to scan a patient’s skin. (In earlier work, Tavassolian and her team had
to work with already biopsied skin for the device to detect if it was
cancerous.)
Healthy tissue reflects
millimeter-wave rays differently than cancerous tissue, so it’s theoretically
possible to spot cancers by monitoring contrasts in the rays reflected back
from the skin. To bring that approach into clinical practice, the researchers
used algorithms to fuse signals captured by multiple different antennas into a
single ultrahigh-bandwidth image, reducing noise and quickly capturing
high-resolution images of even the tiniest mole or blemish.
Spearheaded by Amir
Mirbeik Ph.D. ’18, the team used a tabletop version of their technology to
examine 71 patients during real-world clinical visits, and found their methods
could accurately distinguish benign and malignant lesions in just a few
seconds. Using their device, Tavassolian and Mirbeik could identify cancerous
tissue with 97% sensitivity and 98% specificity — a rate competitive with even
the best hospital-grade diagnostic tools.
“There are other
advanced imaging technologies that can detect skin cancers, but they’re big,
expensive machines that aren’t available in the clinic,” said Tavassolian,
whose work appears in the March 23 issue of Scientific Reports.
“We’re creating a low-cost device that’s as small and as easy to use as a
cellphone, so we can bring advanced diagnostics within reach for everyone.”
Because the team’s
technology delivers results in seconds, it could one day be used instead of a
magnifying dermatoscope in routine checkups, giving extremely accurate results
almost instantly. “That means doctors can integrate accurate diagnostics into
routine checkups, and ultimately treat more patients,” said Tavassolian.
Unlike many other
imaging methods, millimeter-wave rays harmlessly penetrate about 2mm into human
skin, so the team’s imaging technology provides a clear 3D map of scanned
lesions. Future improvements to the algorithm powering the device could
significantly improve mapping of lesion margins, enabling more precise and less
invasive biopsying for malignant lesions.
The next step is to
pack the team’s diagnostic kit onto an integrated circuit, a step that could
soon allow functional handheld millimeter-wave diagnostic devices to be
produced for as little as $100 a piece — a fraction of the cost of
existing hospital-grade diagnostic equipment. The team is already working to
commercialize their technology and hopes to start putting their devices in
clinicians’ hands within the next two years.
“The path forward is
clear, and we know what we need to do,” said Tavassolian. “After this proof of
concept, we need to miniaturize our technology, bring the price down, and bring
it to the market.”
https://www.stevens.edu/news/bye-bye-biopsy-handheld-device-could-painlessly-identify-skin-cancers
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