POC Device Combines Optics, Ultrasound to Improve Thyroid Cancer Screening | Research & Technology | Jun 2021 photonics.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from photonics.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The LUCA device shows high accuracy in thyroid cancer screening
Thyroid nodules are a common pathology having a prevalence of 19-76% when screened with ultrasound, with higher frequencies in women. Current medical methods used to assess the malignancy of a nodule consist in performing an ultrasound, followed by a Doppler ultrasound, and then a biopsy. However, unfortunately, these methods present both low specificity and low sensitivity. This insufficient effectiveness in accurately being able to diagnose thyroid tumors leads to many unclear or unnoticed cases as well as many others that undergo unnecessary surgeries (false positives) and increase the cost of medical healthcare, not to mention the reduction of quality of life of patients.
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IMAGE: First lab tests in 2019 of the LUCA device at ICFO research center in Barcelona. Dr. Mattia Squarcia tests the probe on a healthy patient to see the performance of. view more
Credit: ICFO
Thyroid nodules are a common pathology having a prevalence of 19-76% when screened with ultrasound, with higher frequencies in women. Current medical methods used to assess the malignancy of a nodule consist in performing an ultrasound, followed by a Doppler ultrasound, and then a biopsy. However, unfortunately, these methods present both low specificity and low sensitivity. This insufficient effectiveness in accurately being able to diagnose thyroid tumors leads to many unclear or unnoticed cases as well as many others that undergo unnecessary surgeries (false positives) and increase the cost of medical healthcare, not to mention the reduction of quality of life of patients.