Virtual biopsy could make smear tests obsoleteApril 21, 1999Standard screening techniques involve removing small pieces of tissue - a biopsy - and examining them under a microscope. "This is traumatic, time-consuming and expensive," says Smallwood, "so we wondered if we could make a non-traumatic measurement that would tell us what the cells were doing." It turns out that they can, by measuring an electrical property called impedance - this varies depending on the size, shape and organisation of the cells, all of which change when cancer develops. "The next step is to predict the impedance behaviour from the three-dimensional structure of the tissue using a modelling procedure called finite element analysis," says Smallwood. "In practice, this is very difficult because human tissue is so complex, and the computing power to do it has only just become available." The study is now entering a small-scale clinical trial and has been extended to include cancers of the oesophagus and bladder. "These cancers all develop in the same way through changes in the internal mucosa," says Smallwood. "Bladder cancer is particularly difficult to diagnose, involving a biopsy under general anaesthetic, but only 25 per cent of inflammations are pre-cancerous. If we can refine our screening method we could save patients a lot of trauma." ends Royal Academy of Engineering |
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