Our Funds at Work

Hyper-spectral Imaging for Noninvasive Skin Cancer Diagnosis and Assessment

Jianhua Zhao, MD University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC

Skin Cancer is the most common of all cancers. The clinical diagnosis of skin cancers is largely based on visual examination followed by invasive surgical biopsy of the most suspicious-appearing lesions. Noninvasive diagnosis methods such as optical imaging and spectroscopy would be desirable for screening and early detection as well as for reducing the number of unnecessary biopsies. This project is designed to implement a novel hyper-spectral imaging system and its applications for noninvasive skin cancer diagnosis and assessment.
Essential to any spectroscopic device is the need to scan through a range of wavelengths. What makes hyperspectral imaging so challenging is that this wavelength scanning must be repeated separately for every pixel within the image. Thus any given hyper-spectral image is a composite equivalent of several thousand individual point spectroscopic measurements. The key components for the hyper-spectral imaging system is a tunable light source based on the digital micro-mirror device technology which is widely used in consumer electronics such as projectors and TVs.
The ultimate goal is to implement an improved method for noninvasive early diagnosis or screening of skin cancers and to use optical techniques to monitor and understand the pathobiology for different skin cancers at the tissue level.
This project will also provide the basis for designing appropriate clinical interventions for a range of skin disorders through insights gained in knowing the location or specific chromophores that may serve as therapeutic targets.

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