LDIR Wand could transform oral cancer diagnosis

A team of researchers at Liverpool University has been awarded a £534,000 National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Invention for Innovation (i4i) grant to develop the instrument.

The work will be carried out by researchers from the University’s Department of Physics in collaboration with the Liverpool Head & Neck Centre (LHNC).

According to Liverpool University, the LDIR wand employs a small number of infrared lasers to predict - based on machine learning analysis of infrared spectral images of tissue - lesions in the mouth that are not currently malignant but will become so.

There are over 12,000 cases of oral cancer in the UK annually and early diagnosis is critical to improving patient outcomes. Identifying those lesions of the mouth (dysplasia) that will become cancerous is difficult, leading to unnecessary treatments or missed cancer diagnoses. Currently, dysplasia is diagnosed through a microscopic study of tissue samples from patients, which is time-consuming and can be unreliable due to human subjectivity.

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In a statement, Liverpool University physicist, Professor Peter Weightman, who has led the development of the technology, said: “This i4i award from NIHR provides us with the opportunity to develop a prototype of the LDIR Wand that has the potential to transform oral cancer diagnosis. While this application is focussed on oral cancer our approach should be applicable to any cancer where the diagnosis is based on the analysis of biopsies.”

Professor Richard Shaw from the LHNC said: “This instrument addresses a difficult clinical problem in head and neck cancer diagnosis. We know that earlier diagnosis is key to saving lives, but predicting cancer risk in oral patches is problematic. For some patients we miss a high risk of cancer developing, but for other patients we cannot safely reassure them without better information”

The LDIR Wand is the result of a decade of research funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Cancer Research UK and EPSRC Impact Acceleration Awards. The NIHR i4i award will fund the development of a prototype of the LDIR Wand for use in histopathology laboratories. The ultimate aim of the programme is to develop a device for use in clinic for real-time diagnostics.