6 ms·

Low-cost, non-invasive melanoma detector wins award

312 points by ductionist 9y ago

dreadmocks 9y ago
The creators are from McMaster* University in Canada, their names are Rotimi Fadiya, Prateek Mathur, Michael Takla and Shivad Bhavsar. Really wish they got the credit in the article.
dharma1 9y ago
Could you do this with looking at post-cooling images from something like FLIR One? http://www.flir.com/flirone/ http://www.flir.com/flirone/
- giarc 9y ago
  Perhaps, but from the video it appears they have some software that helps with diagnoses as well. Something the Flir camera wouldn't have (at least not specific to skin cancer).
  - dharma1 9y ago
    Not trying to belittle the project, it's very cool - just might make sense to use existing commodity hardware. Yes the software would be crucial - FLIR One + Android/iOS software for analysis would be a quick route to market
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  Maybe. If I understand correctly, the process they're using is something like the following... 1) Cool the skin down to some depth by applying an icepack 2) Remove icepack and take a video of the skin with infra-red (a temperature map) as the skin reaches thermal equilibrium. 3) Process the "stack" of images by measuring the thermal conductivity at each point-- you do this by getting a curve of the temperature for each point. This will give you a map of structures underneath the skin which have different material properties (a different thermal conductivity).
epmaybe 9y ago
questions I have from a clinical perspective: Today, we see skin lesions that look like melanoma and apply the ABCDE acronym for diagnosis: Asymmetry Border irregularity Color (all the same or not) Diameter greater than 6 mm Evolving size, shape or color (over time) Now, based on this, we would then probably biopsy the lesion (any dermatologists lurking on HN wish to chime in?) and send to pathology to interpret. Will this method beat out the clinical diagnosis in terms of sensitivity (number of false negatives, which is what I would care more about) and specificity (number of false positives), such that we could biopsy more of the patients that we missed before? Additionally, would we see these changes earlier with this software and hardware? Cool idea, nonetheless. I'd be more than happy to set up some sort of clinical study looking at this technique though if there are enough tools out there to implement this myself.
- sp332 9y ago
  Will it beat clinical diagnosis in the first world, maybe not. But if it's cheap, it could be made available gloabally and potentially save a lot of lives.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    If someone from Watsi sees this, I'd love to know if this is something they'd work with their clinical partners to deploy.
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Are there affordable treatment options for folks with skin cancers in non-1st wouuld countries? If not, then this test seems like it is essentially a "congrats, you have cancer, now you and your family will know what kills you"
    - karmajunkie 9y ago
      Melanoma when caught early is very easily treated—you simply cut it out, which has a 98% cure rate. Once it starts to invade subdermal tissue or spreads to the lymphatic system, outcomes rapidly become less optimistic. As recently as a few years ago, a stage III diagnosis had around 50-60% 5 year mortality, and a stage IV had a 90% 2 year mortality. Because melanoma is primarily an immune-system mediated cancer, many of the recent advances with targeted genetics and immune-system stimulation help melanoma patients directly, and the "new" numbers on those cases aren't able to be calculated yet simply because enough time hasn't passed. But the general consensus is that they're going to have to revise those outcome predictions a great deal now that we have these tools available. The question of how many of those treatments are affordable is largely driven by the country they're in—many countries regulate the cost of pharma in general, so they'd be more affordable than in the US.
amelius 9y ago
Did they invent some new mechanism to detect melanomas? Or did they just automate existing methods?
- karmajunkie 9y ago
  This is a novel method—existing patents I've seen on melanoma scanners generally fall into the category of 3D imaging and computer vision to automate what a clinician does to various degrees.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    So is it basically that the specific heat capacity of the material in the top layers of the skin is altered when there's melanoma present, so when it's cooled one can observe that this part warms more slowly (?) than the surrounding tissue (because of density?). It seems likely to me that there would be a difference in reflectivity/transmittivity too that could be detected by using a strong light source that could penetrate the exterior dermal layers. Presumably active scanning like MRI (or microwave heating - probably too risky) would show the differences well too? Would be interesting to read about the range of methods that have been tested (conductivity using surface contact probes would seem another obvious method?). The benefit, as it appears, of the current method is probably simplicity but it doesn't appear to scale to scanning the full surface readily.
    - tylerhou 9y ago
      The article says that cancer cells have a “higher metabolic rate” which I understood to mean that they use more energy and thus generate more heat.
ransom1538 9y ago
[deleted]
- euroclydon 9y ago
  Wait, they’re a scam, but you think there should be more of them?
  - jdhn 9y ago
    Probably meant to say that the licensing is a scam.
  - karmajunkie 9y ago
    GP is a little jaded IMHO (but perhaps with some reason, if family members have dealt with melanoma—my experience has been different) but essentially spot on WRT to the supply and demand. The medical profession is protectionist to the extreme. Basic economic forces should see the supply of medical schools (and doctors that graduate from them) increasing, but the AMA keeps a tight lid on that, and specialization boards further distort the market.
alasdair_ 9y ago
I've seen multiple attempts to get melanoma detectors past the FDA. The last attempt cost millions of dollars on appeals and still ultimately failed. Hopefully thia one will do better.
- taneq 9y ago
  It seems to me that the FDA should allow the best available option through even if it's not very effective, as long as it's safe and no false claims are made. This would at least allow companies to bootstrap and iterate if their approach works at all.
  - jhayward 9y ago
    I believe FDA criteria is it has to be as good or better than the best available technique, which AFAIK is a detailed exam by a trained dermatologist, possibly using several tools like light sources, magnification, etc.
themihai 9y ago
Regardless of the usefulness of the device $40K award doesn't seem a lot, especially for a company like Dayson.
- themihai 9y ago
  I wonder why the down-votes? For a company with hundreds of millions if not billions stashed in tax heavens and a founder who's worth £2.5bn to give a $40k award a year seems like an insult to me. It's not bad but still...even McDonalds had better campaigns as far as social responsibility is concerned.
  - _joel 9y ago
    Let's not forget he was a proponent of Brexit
xyhopguy 9y ago
liquid biposy
mwdalrymple 9y ago
My wife works at McMaster. Lots of great research happening there.
- neves 9y ago
  Can you give some examples?
known 9y ago
I think a proper blood test for proteins should detect cancer e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-fetoprotein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-fetoprotein test to detect liver cancer
foreigner 9y ago
I read this headline as "Mellodrama Detector" X-D

312 points by ductionist 9y ago

The creators are from McMaster* University in Canada, their names are Rotimi Fadiya, Prateek Mathur, Michael Takla and Shivad Bhavsar. Really wish they got the credit in the article.

dharma1 9y ago

Could you do this with looking at post-cooling images from something like FLIR One? http://www.flir.com/flirone/ http://www.flir.com/flirone/

giarc 9y ago
Perhaps, but from the video it appears they have some software that helps with diagnoses as well. Something the Flir camera wouldn't have (at least not specific to skin cancer).
- dharma1 9y ago
  Not trying to belittle the project, it's very cool - just might make sense to use existing commodity hardware. Yes the software would be crucial - FLIR One + Android/iOS software for analysis would be a quick route to market
crispyambulance 9y ago
Maybe. If I understand correctly, the process they're using is something like the following... 1) Cool the skin down to some depth by applying an icepack 2) Remove icepack and take a video of the skin with infra-red (a temperature map) as the skin reaches thermal equilibrium. 3) Process the "stack" of images by measuring the thermal conductivity at each point-- you do this by getting a curve of the temperature for each point. This will give you a map of structures underneath the skin which have different material properties (a different thermal conductivity).

epmaybe 9y ago

questions I have from a clinical perspective: Today, we see skin lesions that look like melanoma and apply the ABCDE acronym for diagnosis: Asymmetry Border irregularity Color (all the same or not) Diameter greater than 6 mm Evolving size, shape or color (over time) Now, based on this, we would then probably biopsy the lesion (any dermatologists lurking on HN wish to chime in?) and send to pathology to interpret. Will this method beat out the clinical diagnosis in terms of sensitivity (number of false negatives, which is what I would care more about) and specificity (number of false positives), such that we could biopsy more of the patients that we missed before? Additionally, would we see these changes earlier with this software and hardware? Cool idea, nonetheless. I'd be more than happy to set up some sort of clinical study looking at this technique though if there are enough tools out there to implement this myself.

sp332 9y ago
Will it beat clinical diagnosis in the first world, maybe not. But if it's cheap, it could be made available gloabally and potentially save a lot of lives.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  If someone from Watsi sees this, I'd love to know if this is something they'd work with their clinical partners to deploy.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Are there affordable treatment options for folks with skin cancers in non-1st wouuld countries? If not, then this test seems like it is essentially a "congrats, you have cancer, now you and your family will know what kills you"
  - karmajunkie 9y ago
    Melanoma when caught early is very easily treated—you simply cut it out, which has a 98% cure rate. Once it starts to invade subdermal tissue or spreads to the lymphatic system, outcomes rapidly become less optimistic. As recently as a few years ago, a stage III diagnosis had around 50-60% 5 year mortality, and a stage IV had a 90% 2 year mortality. Because melanoma is primarily an immune-system mediated cancer, many of the recent advances with targeted genetics and immune-system stimulation help melanoma patients directly, and the "new" numbers on those cases aren't able to be calculated yet simply because enough time hasn't passed. But the general consensus is that they're going to have to revise those outcome predictions a great deal now that we have these tools available. The question of how many of those treatments are affordable is largely driven by the country they're in—many countries regulate the cost of pharma in general, so they'd be more affordable than in the US.

amelius 9y ago

Did they invent some new mechanism to detect melanomas? Or did they just automate existing methods?

karmajunkie 9y ago
This is a novel method—existing patents I've seen on melanoma scanners generally fall into the category of 3D imaging and computer vision to automate what a clinician does to various degrees.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  So is it basically that the specific heat capacity of the material in the top layers of the skin is altered when there's melanoma present, so when it's cooled one can observe that this part warms more slowly (?) than the surrounding tissue (because of density?). It seems likely to me that there would be a difference in reflectivity/transmittivity too that could be detected by using a strong light source that could penetrate the exterior dermal layers. Presumably active scanning like MRI (or microwave heating - probably too risky) would show the differences well too? Would be interesting to read about the range of methods that have been tested (conductivity using surface contact probes would seem another obvious method?). The benefit, as it appears, of the current method is probably simplicity but it doesn't appear to scale to scanning the full surface readily.
  - tylerhou 9y ago
    The article says that cancer cells have a “higher metabolic rate” which I understood to mean that they use more energy and thus generate more heat.

ransom1538 9y ago

[deleted]

euroclydon 9y ago
Wait, they’re a scam, but you think there should be more of them?
- jdhn 9y ago
  Probably meant to say that the licensing is a scam.
- karmajunkie 9y ago
  GP is a little jaded IMHO (but perhaps with some reason, if family members have dealt with melanoma—my experience has been different) but essentially spot on WRT to the supply and demand. The medical profession is protectionist to the extreme. Basic economic forces should see the supply of medical schools (and doctors that graduate from them) increasing, but the AMA keeps a tight lid on that, and specialization boards further distort the market.

alasdair_ 9y ago

I've seen multiple attempts to get melanoma detectors past the FDA. The last attempt cost millions of dollars on appeals and still ultimately failed. Hopefully thia one will do better.

taneq 9y ago
It seems to me that the FDA should allow the best available option through even if it's not very effective, as long as it's safe and no false claims are made. This would at least allow companies to bootstrap and iterate if their approach works at all.
- jhayward 9y ago
  I believe FDA criteria is it has to be as good or better than the best available technique, which AFAIK is a detailed exam by a trained dermatologist, possibly using several tools like light sources, magnification, etc.

themihai 9y ago

Regardless of the usefulness of the device $40K award doesn't seem a lot, especially for a company like Dayson.

themihai 9y ago
I wonder why the down-votes? For a company with hundreds of millions if not billions stashed in tax heavens and a founder who's worth £2.5bn to give a $40k award a year seems like an insult to me. It's not bad but still...even McDonalds had better campaigns as far as social responsibility is concerned.
- _joel 9y ago
  Let's not forget he was a proponent of Brexit

xyhopguy 9y ago

liquid biposy

mwdalrymple 9y ago

My wife works at McMaster. Lots of great research happening there.

neves 9y ago
Can you give some examples?

known 9y ago

I think a proper blood test for proteins should detect cancer e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-fetoprotein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-fetoprotein test to detect liver cancer

foreigner 9y ago

I read this headline as "Mellodrama Detector" X-D