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Home Industry News A European photonics team is developing a new endoscope to scan for initial signs of bladder cancer

A European photonics team is developing a new endoscope to scan for initial signs of bladder cancer

3rd July 2020

A European photonics team is developing a new endoscope which will provide detailed and non-invasive information to decide what grade and stage that a tumour has reached in the bladder, via multi-wavelength lasers.

Bladder cancer is challenging to spot in its initial states and is usually missed when applying white light. Furthermore, clinicians currently struggle to create detailed and precise images inside the bladder because light can’t penetrate deep into the tissue; thus, resulting in dark and blurred images.

The current methods for testing bladder cancer involve urine cytology, urinalysis and urine tests for tumour markers; however, while these tests find cancerous cells in the urine, they don’t catch the disease in its initial stages. However, the new endoscope uses multi-wavelength lasers and will be able to form an image from inside the tissue to give an accurate and rapid diagnosis of the existence of a tumour, as well as its grade and stage.

Amplitude, the project, is merging physics and medical skills to create a state-of-the-art multi-modal imaging system complete with an endoscopic probe that delivers a rapid diagnosis in a clinical environment.

Dr Regina Gymenyuk, the Project Coordinator, stated: “A societal challenge for the next few decades is the instant diagnosis of major diseases. Photonics provides excellent opportunities to give healthcare professionals advanced, non-invasive diagnostics that detect symptoms and diseases at an early stage. The multimodal imaging approach in Amplitude is based on three modalities, which together will provide precise and detailed information necessary to determine the tumour stage and grade. The system being developed by Amplitude will be the first device to deliver a label free procedure. This means we can avoid using fluorophores and their phototoxic effects which can sometimes damage cells. A reduction in the phototoxicity during autofluorescence imaging will minimise cell damage. The so-called third biological window, a range of one-thousand-five-hundred and fifty–one-thousand-eight-hundred and seventy nanometres, has not yet been extensively investigated. While it is possible to investigate this range at present, we would need a Supercontinuum laser source, which is prohibitively expensive. The new lasers that will be developed by Amplitude will allow us to explore this wavelength range with compact and cost-effective systems.”

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