New collaboration hopes to improve cancer survival rates with a groundbreaking imaging technology

A new collaboration, led by UK optical imaging company Michelson Diagnostics (MDL), has been awarded a £325k grant from the UK’s Technology Strategy Board, to support the development of a groundbreaking ‘OCT’ imaging technology that hopes to revolutionise cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The collaboration is between MDL, University of Cardiff, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, National Physical Laboratory, semiconductor specialist Kamelian and medical imaging systems specialist Tactiq.

The funded project, titled ‘OMICRON’, will last two years, and will focus on development of an in-vivo imaging probe, using optical coherence tomography (OCT), to obtain high resolution sub-surface images of cancerous tissue, operating at the new, untried wavelength of 1μm.

Leading OCT researcher Professor Wolfgang Drexler, Director of Research at the University of Cardiff Dept. of Optometry and Vision Science, said “We believe that images acquired at 1μm wavelength will offer improved contrast and resolution that will help clinicians to distinguish between healthy and cancerous tissue”.

Clinicians frequently take biopsy samples of tissue for laboratory analysis by pathologists when diagnosing, assessing, treating and monitoring cancer. This can be inefficient, expensive and time-consuming. The biopsy may be poorly targeted on the tumour, and results from the analysis can take weeks to come back.

Dr Nick Stone, Head of Biophotonics at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, added “OCT scanning has the exciting potential of both guiding and reducing the dependence on biopsies, which could speed up cancer diagnosis and treatment, reducing the pressure on overloaded pathology departments, and improve outcomes from cancer surgery”.

Jon Holmes, CEO of MDL said “We are very excited about winning this grant as it has enabled a collaboration of world class academic and industrial partners, to develop products which will make an enormous difference to the lives of many of those with cancer”