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UCLA develops world’s fastest camera to hunt down cancer in real time

52 points by mrsebastian 14y ago

adaml_623 14y ago
An interesting statistic to put this article into perspective. 1. This system scans 200,000 cells per second. 2. There are 30 trillion blood cells in an average human. We'll have stuff like real time blood filtering eventually and when we do that will be something really really impressive.
- beefsack 14y ago
  And another thing to put it into perspective: https://www.google.com/search?q=30%20trillion%20%2F%20200000%20seconds%20in%20years https://www.google.com/search?q=30%20trillion%20%2F%20200000...
- icegreentea 14y ago
  Well, a better statistic is the false positive rate. They have a one in a million false positive rate. If they did do a full scan, they would have 30 MILLION false positives. If they improve their speed a 1000 fold, it brings their scan time to a day and a half. If they improve their false positive rate by a 1000, they would still have 30,000 false positive events. Edit: I guess the point is that the purpose of the device is not full scans, nor are full scans really needed, or maybe not even helpful.
delackner 14y ago
If someone had all cancer cells in their bloodstream effectively destroyed, could this indefinitely prevent metastis?
- pcrh 14y ago
  To prevent metastasis you would need to be permanently linked-up to this machine. It is more likely to find uses in diagnostics, where you would be able to detect abnormal cells, or cells that have been tagged with a diagnostic tool such as a specially-targeted antibody, in a blood sample that are too rare to be detected by current methods (except PCR). The original paper also proposes uses in "imaging and detection of bioparticles of interest in oceanography (e.g., phytoplanktons), energy science (e.g., oil emulsions and engineered microbes), environmental science, food science, cosmetics, pharmaceutics, and medicine."
bugsbunnyak 14y ago
Some background on what this could be used for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_cytometry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_cytometry

52 points by mrsebastian 14y ago

An interesting statistic to put this article into perspective. 1. This system scans 200,000 cells per second. 2. There are 30 trillion blood cells in an average human. We'll have stuff like real time blood filtering eventually and when we do that will be something really really impressive.

beefsack 14y ago
And another thing to put it into perspective: https://www.google.com/search?q=30%20trillion%20%2F%20200000%20seconds%20in%20years https://www.google.com/search?q=30%20trillion%20%2F%20200000...
icegreentea 14y ago
Well, a better statistic is the false positive rate. They have a one in a million false positive rate. If they did do a full scan, they would have 30 MILLION false positives. If they improve their speed a 1000 fold, it brings their scan time to a day and a half. If they improve their false positive rate by a 1000, they would still have 30,000 false positive events. Edit: I guess the point is that the purpose of the device is not full scans, nor are full scans really needed, or maybe not even helpful.

delackner 14y ago

If someone had all cancer cells in their bloodstream effectively destroyed, could this indefinitely prevent metastis?

pcrh 14y ago
To prevent metastasis you would need to be permanently linked-up to this machine. It is more likely to find uses in diagnostics, where you would be able to detect abnormal cells, or cells that have been tagged with a diagnostic tool such as a specially-targeted antibody, in a blood sample that are too rare to be detected by current methods (except PCR). The original paper also proposes uses in "imaging and detection of bioparticles of interest in oceanography (e.g., phytoplanktons), energy science (e.g., oil emulsions and engineered microbes), environmental science, food science, cosmetics, pharmaceutics, and medicine."

bugsbunnyak 14y ago

Some background on what this could be used for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_cytometry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_cytometry