Making light work of medical monitoring

The hand-held Tricorder used by 'Bones' McCoy on Star Trek's USS Enterprise to scan patients in his futuristic sick bay may be fictional — but today's optical engineers are developing a tool which uses light to reveal the structure of body tissues beneath the skin and identify conditions that may need treatment.

The device can be used for a wide range of medical monitoring purposes, such as imaging diseases which affect the structure and development of skin, including certain types of cancer; monitoring genetic blood disorders and in the assessment of wound and burn healing. It also has the potential to provide a non-invasive method of checking blood sugar levels in diabetics.

The tool has been developed over the last eight months by Drs Ian Stockford and Stephen Morgan in the school of electrical and electronic engineering at

. Their work has been recognised this month by the

which awarded them prizes from the