Researchers from the University of Nottingham have developed a new spatial frequency domain imaging (SFDI) device for gastrointestinal cancer screening, promising enhanced accessibility and cost-effectiveness.
Gastrointestinal cancers (GC) are among the most common forms of cancer, accounting for more than one-third of all cancer deaths worldwide. Early diagnosis is crucial when it comes to reducing the mortality rate, with endoscopic screening proving to be an effective approach for detecting potentially fatal tumours.
To ensure as many people as possible can benefit from screening programmes, imaging systems should be cost-effective when it comes to manufacture and operation while still maintaining the vital accuracy required to minimise the likelihood of cancer going undetected.
Published in the Journal of Biomedical Optics, researchers from the University of Nottingham have developed an innovative SFDI device, which could help make GC screening more widely accessible to the general public.
In SFDI, a repeating 2D pattern of light is projected onto a target area. By examining the intensity of the reflected light patterns, information about the optical properties of the tissue under investigation can be uncovered, which can reveal the presence of cancerous lesions. Despite the simplicity and affordability of this imaging modality, current SFDI systems are too bulky to fit inside standard endoscopes, limiting their use in industry.
Existing systems are not fit for routine endoscopic deployment in the gastrointestinal tract because they either use digital micromirror device-based projectors, which are costly and cannot be sufficiently miniaturised, or use fibre bundles which produce low-quality patterns at a limited set of wavelengths and only record low-resolution images, or use rigid endoscopes that are not flexible enough.
Jane continued: "To overcome this, we designed an ultraminiature SFDI system that uses a custom-made optic fibre bundle as a projector and combined this with an ultraminiature camera. We also used a custom algorithm that tracks phase deviations in projected sinusoidal patterns, reducing noise in the captured absorption and scattering profiles."
Experiments with tissue phantoms mimicking the optical properties of healthy and cancerous tissues showed that the proposed device could provide excellent contrast between the two tissue types. The research also showed that the proposed system could be miniaturised further, allowing for minimally invasive endoscopic procedures.
Our prototype shows promise as a cost-effective, quantitative imaging tool to detect variations in optical absorption and scattering as indicators of cancer," concludes Crowley. "This work could form the basis of new devices suitable for cost-effective endoscopic deployment for screening of gastrointestinal cancers.
To read the full paper in the Journal of Biomedical Optics, click here.
