Skinometer promises to speed up skin cancer treatment

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A skin scanner developed at Warwick University will enable surgeons to establish the exact extent of skin cancer before surgery, an advance that promises to speed up treatment.

Skinometer could speed up treatment of skin cancer
Skinometer could speed up treatment of skin cancer - Credit: Professor Emma MacPherson, Warwick University

The so-called ‘skinometer, the first patient measurement device to harness light from the part of the spectrum where infrared and microwaves meet, has been developed with support from EPSRC.

According to Warwick, current practice can require taking and testing multiple skin samples during the procedure, but with the skinometer a three-hour surgical procedure could take half an hour to perform.

The skinometer has started undergoing preliminary testing on patients at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust and a handheld version has been developed.

In a statement Professor Joe Hardwicke, a skin cancer surgeon at UHCW, said: “This new technology may give us the ability to diagnose cancers in living tissue in real time and avoid the need for biopsy in the future for certain cancer types. This will speed up diagnosis and could provide a tailor-made treatment for each patient.”

The skinometer produces tiny pulses of light from the terahertz part of the spectrum, which strike the skin’s surface and bounce off.

The waveforms of the reflected light show how far the skin cancer has spread beneath the skin. Knowing this prior to surgery will mean the surgery can be completed faster and with better skin graft planning. The device is completely safe and causes no discomfort at all.

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The skinometer is also designed to accurately indicate moisture levels in the skin and how the skin reacts to different moisturisers.

Extensive collection of such data from a wide range of people will aid development of more effective, skin-type-specific sun creams and to this end the Warwick team are collaborating with Lubrizol to explore the possibilities.

Researcher leader Professor Emma MacPherson, from Warwick’s Department of Physics, said: “Skin cancer rates have increased rapidly in the UK in recent decades, with over 16,000 new cases identified every year.

“As well as helping prevention by aiding sunscreen development, the new skinometer will speed up the treatment pathway, achieving better outcomes, reducing patient stress and making more effective use of NHS resources.

“It could potentially enter clinical use within five years and, beyond that timeframe, could eventually become a feature of GPs’ surgeries.

“My vision is that ultimately the technology can also be extended to benefit detection of a variety of different cancers such as breast and colon cancers.”

The ‘Terahertz Skinometer for Improved Cancer Prevention and Treatment’ research project began in March 2019 and is due to run until December 2022. It has received around £653,000 in EPSRC funding. Additional support has been provided by Cancer Research UK.

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