I-Corps: Noninvasive detection of bladder cancer using ringing modality of atomic force microscopy

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a noninvasive diagnostic test to detect and monitor the presence of bladder cancer and to assess its grade. In the U.S. alone, there are 800,000 survivors living under the fear of a high chance of recurrence (50-80%) from bladder cancer. The majority of the patients require an in-office invasive monitoring procedure repeated every 3 to 6 months. This procedure yields high lifetime costs, pain, and possible complications from trauma to the urethra, which leads to a low patient compliance rate (40%). The proposed technology will provide seamless integration into the standard of care for patients who undergo regular standard cytology as part of their follow-up appointments. The goal is to provide a noninvasive, rapid, reproducible, high accuracy test that is easy to perform and interpret.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a combination of an advanced imaging modality and machine learning methods to process those images for the detection of bladder cancer. The imaging modality utilizes the so-called ringing mode of atomic force microscopy (AFM), which provides high-resolution images of the surface of cells extracted from a patient’s urine. Processing these images through machine learning algorithms permits the assignment of a diagnostic score, which will help urologist/oncologists to monitor recurrence and progression of the cancer. The method may seamlessly be incorporated into the existing clinical practice, by using cells currently examined in cell cytology. Cytology testing is a noninvasive procedure that suffers from low accuracy when detecting cancer. Preliminary results have shown that the proposed technology may have a much higher accuracy (94%). This accuracy exceeds even the currently used standard of practice, an invasive optical examination of the bladder (cystoscopy).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.