CancerScanner™ Technology

SpectraPath's Elastic Light Scattering Spectroscopy (ELSS) system provides unique advantages over other cancer detection methods under development such as Diffuse Reflective Spectroscopy (DRS) and Fluorescence Spectroscopy (FS).

• ELSS directly detects morphological changes in cells measuring the changes in cellular nuclei. DRS can only measure scattered light and absorption of whole tissue which also changes from patient to patient.
• ELSS can detect border neoplasm in open surgery. DRS cannot distinguish between tissue surface and the area underneath the tissue surface.
• ELSS can detect early-stage cancer (cancer cells at tissue surface) while DRS only detects a tumor if volume is larger than 1cm3.
• An ELSS probe fits within a biopsy needle but a DRS probe is too large.
• ELSS has excellent sensitivity compared to FS which lacks sensitivity as neoplasm changes will vary by age and tissue structure.
• ELSS is able to differentiate cancerous cells from normal cells on mice/rat organs such as breast, prostate, kidney, and liver. FS only has the potential to detect cervical cancer.
• ELSS is inexpensive compared to FS which requires cooled CCD detectors.
• Spatial resolution of ELSS can go down to 50 micron (~5 cells) while the spatial resolution of FS is limited by source detector optical fiber separations.
• ELSS has superior signal to noise ratio than FS.

CancerScanner™ is a technology based on detecting morphological alterations of cells from normal to pre-cancerous and cancerous conditions in-vivo using elastic light scattering (ELS) spectrum. Some cancers (carcinomas) originate in the epithelium and develop cell changes called dysplasia. Detection of dysplasia is particularly important since 90% of all human cancers originate in the epithelium.

Changes in the nuclei of the epithelial cells are among the most important indicators for dysplasia . Larger nuclei in cancerous and pre-cancerous cells cause different ELS spectra, which have been demonstrated through experiments with the CancerScanner™ on mice. Therefore, CancerScanner™ technology has the potential to be used in early diagnosis of a number of carcinomas: cervix, mammary carcinoma of breast; squamous cell carcinoma of skin, and bladder; adenocarcinoma of colon, rectum, and prostate; and Barrett's adenocarcinoma of esophagus.

CancerScanner™ has a great potential of differentiating different cancer grades of cells, including dysplasia. Extensive microscopic examinations have shown that the mean nuclear areas vary significantly depending on whether the tissue examined is normal, low-grade, or high-grade cancer . Some of these studies have also shown that nucleus size varies considerably even between cells of benign and slightly atypical samples.

It should be stressed that detection of dysplasia is crucial because dysplasia cannot be detected by visual examinations or diagnostic radiology methods, such as X-ray and ultrasound. In addition, many cancers can be cured if detected early. However, cancerous tissue is often detected only after it becomes visible. Therefore, SpectraPath is planning to utilize the CancerScanner™ technology on human subjects to verify specificity and sensitivity of the technology.

The concept of the CancerScanner™ technology was proven on EMT6 mammary adenocarcinoma cells grown on the breast region of Balb/c mice. CancerScanner™ could reliably differentiate cancerous cells from normal cells. (Click here for Clinical Trial Results)

CancerScanner™ is a non-invasive and a real-time technology. As a non-invasive technology, physicians can diagnose normal, precancerous, and cancerous cells without taking tissue or blood from patients. As a real-time system, doctors can monitor the tissue of interest in real time and inform their patients about the diagnosis results during the procedure.