Multidimensional endoscopy for early cancer detection

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Each year in the UK, over 55,000 patients will be diagnosed with oesophageal or lung cancer; a staggering 44,000 will die from their disease. The majority of patients are currently diagnosed when their disease is at a late stage (with regional or distant spread), yielding less than 10% survival over 5 years. Therefore, a key clinical unmet need remains for early disease diagnosis. To detect these cancers early, patients that are at a high risk of disease might undergo endoscopy. An endoscope is a long, thin, flexible tube with a light source and video camera at one end to relay images from inside the body. They replicate what our eye could see if we were able to look inside the body. Endoscopy is vital for surveillance and diagnosis of cancer, however, many cancers of the oesophagus (food pipe) and lung start out as small abnormalities that are hard to spot using conventional endoscopes.The focus of this research is to augment the vision of the endoscopist by designing a specialist video camera that detects the properties of light that our eyes are blind to. We will also use this new camera in a benchtop system that can analyse tissue that has been taken out of the body (biopsied) very quickly, before it is sent to a pathologist to check for cancer. Our new cameras are designed to be cost effective and provide extra information to help doctors with diagnosing cancer in the oesophagus and lung, and could ultimately replace the current standard-of-care.