Scientists use fast camera for cancer detection

American scientists have developed a method to quickly screen large numbers of cells, which should improve the detection of abnormalities. With this they hope that cancer can be detected at an early stage.

The detection system, developed at the University of California in Los Angeles, uses a camera that can record six million frames per second. This camera was already developed in 2009 and for a while was considered the world’s fastest camera. Instead of a cmos or ccd sensor, the system uses a technique called photonic time stretch. Images are created with a short laser pulse, which lasts about a billionth of a second. The captured photons are amplified and ‘stretched’, which ensures that electronic components have time to digitally record the image. The shutter speed of the camera is 450 picoseconds, or 0.00000045 milliseconds.

According to the scientists, the camera is linked to a so-called flow cytometer, in which cells are transported through a thin tube. This enables the camera to form an image of each cell. Flow cytometers have long been used to ‘count’ cells with certain properties, but normally rely on scattering of light and fluorescent signals, which provides less detail than creating an image.

The camera system allows 100,000 cells to be viewed per second; that is 100 times faster than other imaging systems. Being able to quickly screen many cells should make it easier to discover abnormalities that can cause cancer, for example. Blood screening could detect leukemia before it becomes a problem: the disease often starts with only a few abnormal blood cells, which due to their small number often remain undetectable with conventional methods.

Clinical tests are being conducted with patients to determine to what extent the technique can be used in practice. Among other things, blood or urine can be analysed. The results of this have not yet been published, but the scientists hope to make medical analysis cheaper and more accurate with their system.

It is not the first time that cameras have been used for a medical analysis. Previously, the University of Twente filmed drug recording with a camera that takes 25 million frames per second. The British University of Lincoln also announced that it has made a cmos sensor with a length and width of 12.8 cm. This makes the chip one of the largest in the world. This, like the American camera system, is used for cancer research.