event
Friday 06 Dec 2019: Augmenting the vision of the endoscopist: Seeing early cancer in a new light
Sarah Bohndiek - University of Cambridge
Newman Red 12:30-13:30
Early detection of cancer increases survival by more than 3-fold. Many programmes for cancer screening and surveillance rely on white light endoscopy, where images are relayed outside of the body for review and identification of suspicious areas of tissue. These suspicious areas may then be subject to higher resolution imaging, biopsy sampling for gold-standard pathology, or curative resection to completely remove the tissue. Unfortunately, the use of white light in endoscopy leads to poor contrast for early cancer, and results in miss rates of up to 60%. Over the past 5 years, we have advanced several new endoscopic imaging methods that rely on the complex interactions of light with tissue to enhance the contrast for early cancer, for example, hyperspectral imaging. Here, I will introduce the physical principles underlying these approaches, the instrumentation challenges for precision measurement and the clinical barriers that must be overcome to reach our goal of application for these new technologies in a healthcare setting.
