Contactless 3D body scanner to shed light on diagnosis

Engineers and computer scientists at Nottingham University will use a £1.8m grant to help build the walk-through scanner. The grant is part of the larger £5.4m InlightenUs project to be run with the Universities of Edinburgh and Southampton.

Researchers from these institutions will use advanced optical physics, detector technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to optimise the diagnostic potential of microscopy, using light as a non-invasive imaging tool.

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Medical scanner captures 3D pictures of whole human body

The imaging technique is currently capable of detecting 1mm beneath the skin. For deeper penetration, the project will trial infrared lasers that produce so-called ‘invisible’ light to go to 5mm, which is deep enough to diagnose melanomas, and then to 10mm which would allow medics to look at joints and bones.

Infrared light has the potential to provide clearer diagnostic information than established technologies such as X-rays, which can have damaging effects, and MRI, which is expensive and can cause discomfort.