Slashdot Mirror
Cancer Cells Detected Using $400 Digital Camera
fergus07 writes "Researchers have detected oral cancer cells using a fiber-optic cable and an off-the-shelf Olympus E-330 camera worth $400. The work by Rice University biomedical engineers and researchers from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center could improve access to diagnostic imaging tools in many parts of the world where these expensive resources are scarce. In the tests, a common fluorescent dye was used to make cell nuclei glow brightly and images were taken using the tip of the fiber-optic bundle attached to the camera. The distorted nuclei, which indicate cancerous and pre-cancerous cells, could then be distinguished on the camera's LCD monitor."
A divining rod can detect water, too. What matters is the false positive and false negative rate.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
... better get on this to make sure that this technology can't be used in the U.S. otherwise costs might go down. Similar to how we can't import drugs: medically, if it's cheap, it's dangerous.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
That's so cheap! Every hospital in the world can afford that! People can be screened for cancer cheaply at the tiniest sign. We'll catch it faster so we'll treat more people early! And research will be that bit easier!
it's under construction
Great to know, but can I afford to treat it? Knowing I have cancer but being unable to afford treatment just seems like torture.
Based on portability, performance and cost, you could make a case for using them both to lower health care costs in developed countries...
Not in the US. And it never will until medical costs and fees become transparent to the consumer; people start taking care of themselves (eat and drink less, stop smoking, and get some exercise) and stop the cost is no object mentality when people are dieing. We're supposed to die. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep someone alive for another few days (if at all), drugged out of their mind is just a waste of resources.
As one doctor said to me once, sometimes medicine does too much.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Soo... a $400 camera and a $10,000 fiber optic cable?
... or rather, was, until I discovered how boring staring down a microscope every day actually was, jumped ship, and rejoined the land of the living. What working as a pathology resident did teach me, however, is just how fucking complicated cancer diagnosis is and how incredibly smart pathologists are. These guys have 5 straight years of pushing pushing glass and reading textbooks, and often have a completely encyclopedic knowledge of disease and cell morphology. Absolutely useless in the real world, and only useful when you are staring down a microscope trying to come up with a diagnosis.
Certainly the haphazard arrangement of cells and dysmorphic nuclei/prominent nucleoli can be one indication that something is malignant, but lets be honest: if some guy took a sample of your nasal mucosa and used his 400 dollar camera to determine that something up your nose was cancer, would that really be enough for you go to: "Alright. Sign me up for terribly invasive and debilitating surgery. That's enough proof for me." As a point of care screening tool to limit unecessary biopsies? Maybe, but it would really have to be quite sensitive (rules out appropriately). For true diagnostic purposes? No way.
A proper diagnosis can often involve multiple chemical stains and immunostains, and for high stakes diagnosis like cancer, often involves having multiple pathologists at multiple institutions look at the slides. So anything that offers some quick solution like this is disingenuous.
could you attach a fiber optic bundle to your camera? sounds like a custom job to me.
Coat everything in a thick and bulky neutral colored plastic shell and charge $40,000 and you'll start to have an actual medical imaging product.
Great. Cue up the legislation in California (I'm looking at San Francisco) requiring digital camera manufacturers to place "Warning: This device may cause cancer" notices on all digital cameras sold.
By the time the FDA approves this device for diagnostic use, it will be a $10,000 camera ann it will need to be operated by a licensed radiologist.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
We are taking about medical procedures and Cancer. Use the damn $20k camera.
The parent poster is correct about that. While that's not the total cost, you still need somebody with qualifications to interpret it, $400 is affordable in at least the first and second world countries and developing countries could still benefit from donated equipment.
To actually sell this system, you'd have to hide it inside a big beige box and slap a $400,000 sticker on it. This is, sadly, not a joke.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Equipment costs are small relative to the personnel and facility costs. Besides, whether you use a $400 camera or a $2,000 "custom" (i.e OTS, integrated) CCD in a $50,000 detection machine where most of the money is in something other than hardware (i.e.: R&D, liability, marketing, OH&P), the net cost to consumers in any first world country will be the same.
You didn't really think that this is going to have a $400 pricetag at your local doctor's office, did you? Worse yet, are you going to find a practicing doctor with the free time to hack together a cancer detector and the balls to actually use it in a production setting? And - really - would you trust some guy with barely 4 years of general studies college and two years of classroom medical training whom you've never met to decide whether or not you need lifesaving procedures based on something they built in their garage so you can save $300 on a diagnostic visit?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
...then what?
The problem with this is that it does not detect cancer cells but anomalies that may be cancer cells. All the dentist can do is refer one to an oral surgeon who will just look at the tongue and ask if one has bitten it accidentally in the last few days. They are not going to do a biopsy on something they can not see and they are not trained to interpret the photos.
The article mentions an olympus camera, but I don't see any reason in principle why other camera makers couldn't also be used. If they could put this function into CHDK, it'd be pretty awesome.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
So all I need is my iPhone 4 and a strand of fiber optic material to see cancer cells! It's got that 5 megapixel camera now! Too bad I can make calls with it :(
Wait... So a $400 camera attached to fiber optics worth $5k... I think there's a slight misconception of what is the costy part of the system.
The setup is basically a LED based fluorescent ficroscope with the usual dichroic mirror setup. The LED and the fiber optic cable are also probably more expensive than the camera itself. There are innovations however: 1. LED based fluorescence scopes are as yet experimental; 2. Fiber optic cable in microscopy is currently a domain of the operating room; 3. The entire ocular is being replaced with a camera. Lastly, the big question: the cost of the fluorescent contrast material. Medical grade stuff is priced by the gram.
I know im burning karma with a flamethrower here, but probably linking goatse guy could be on topic in this particular article, depending on how much costed the camera it was taken, and the incidence of colorectal cancer.
According to this Nobel Prize winner's research, Dr. Otto Von Warburg found:
1. Cancer arrives and spreads in a body wherever there is lack of oxygen in the circulatory system,
2. Cancer thrives and causes a body to have lower PH level,
3. When animal cells are starved of oxygen, they will miraculously preserve their life rather than
wither and die by converting to a metabolic process of fermenting sugar into alcohol.
In these recent years, a surgeon south of America below the equator, Dr. Simonsini (http://CancerIsFungus.Com) has absolute success in his patients when he hypothesized and dispensed remedy in the assumption that Cancer and Fungus is almost indistinguishable; where even a virus is equate to the immune-system attack function of an invading fungus.
Remedy here:
Mineral sulfur itself will increase the oxygen transport of cells, so consider buying raw cabbage to juice it.
Calcium will create oxygen when interacting with stomach digestion (a Hydrochloric acid), therefore juiced raw cabbage is very desirable rather than buying mineral sulfur.
Store-bought basketball-shaped cabbage is grown with chemicals to stunt it's growth and gives an otherwise unpleasant burning soapy taste when eaten raw; without this chemical, all cabbage will grow over 5-feet tall and has a more appealing flavor than iceberg and romaine lettuce: consider growing your own cabbage, or buying cabbage from a store only to peel away it's stunted leaves to reveal the apex where you can soak the entire stem in a 75% water and Hydrogen Peroxide to regenerate roots to re-grow the plant with cleaner water.
Cancer cells don't have fingers...