Feb 28 2011
Duke University has designed a two-laser microscopy technique that offers high-resolution images and can aid physicians to improve the diagnosis of skin cancer.
The device uses two lasers to probe the skin cells and uses minimum energy into a suspicious mole. This energy gets redistributed inside the skin cells and detects the places of diverse skin pigments.
Duke graduate student, Thomas Matthews, who helped in creating the laser technique, commented that with the help of the novel laser microscopy technique, researchers can now detect significant chemical variations between healthy and cancerous skin tissues.
The technique will be applied on old skin samples to determine whether the laser technique can detect alterations in moles that later became cancerous.
According to Warren S. Warren, Chemistry Professor and Director of Duke’s Center for Molecular and Biomolecular Imaging, even if the technique is only 50% accurate, it can still bring down the rate of false skin cancer diagnoses considerably.
University of Miami’s dermatologist, James Grichnik stated that although the technique is limited to fixed tissues, it holds great potential to identify skin cancer before the biopsy. This means unnecessary biopsies can be eliminated and thus can save significant costs.
Matthews is conducting a mice study to evaluate whether the device could be used to determine a suspicious mole without excision. However, such a tool could prove costly and would not be available for some time. Meanwhile, pathologists can use the laser technique to diagnose the biopsied tissues, Warren concluded.