A new hand-held device straight out of Star Trek’s sick bay will soon be available to diagnose skin cancer. Early trials of the tiny gadget, which detects skin cancer in twenty seconds flat, suggest it’s accurate enough to diagnose deadly malignant melanomas without the need for a biopsy.
From the patient’s standpoint, the device means no more risk of being scarred by the unnecessary removal of moles, and no more waiting days or weeks to find out whether cancer is present in the first place.
The gadget detects cancer by a complicated technique called Optical Transfer Diagnosis, which measures how much light of the wave length absorbed by blood is absorbed by a suspicious mole. If the area in question absorbs more of the light than the healthy tissue around it, there is a strong chance it is cancerous, since tumors develop new blood vessels to feed them and help them grow. In tests at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, the device correctly diagnosed eleven malignant melanomas.
The pocket-size cancer detector is in the process of development by Balter Medical in Norway. It should be available in about two years, and will cost about $750.
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