Oral tumour test returns results in five minutes

A non-invasive test for oral tumours can return results in under five minutes, claim cancer researchers in India.

The Diffuse Reflectance Imaging System (DRIS) is capable of real-time recognition of healthy oral tissue from pre-malignant and malignant tissues with accuracy claimed to be comparable to the gold standard histopathology of a biopsy sample.

The system comprises an unmodified Andor Luca-R electron multiplying charge coupled device (EMCCD) camera, which captures monochrome images of the patient’s mouth at 545 and 575nm.

Andor, which has its corporate headquarters in Belfast, provided its SOLIS software that calculates a ratio image (R545/R575) of the area under investigation, then generates a Pseudo Colour Map (PCM) where blue indicates healthy tissue, red dysplastic or pre-malignant tissue, and yellow identifying malignant tissue.

Dr Subhash Narayanan, a biophotonics consultant at the Centre for Earth Science Studies in Kerala, India led the research.

He told The Engineer via email that clinical trials have been carried out in patients at the Regional Cancer Centre in Trivandrum, India to evaluate the capability of  the R545/R575 ratio to discriminate different types of lesions in vivo.