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An Israeli researcher found a way to diagnose melanoma in a moment

A researcher from Tel Aviv University has developed a modern technology that will enable an automatic and immediate diagnosis of melanoma. The new development has already been successfully tested on dozens of patients, and is expected to revolutionize the field.

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• Melanoma

• Tel Aviv University

• skin cancer

• tumor

• cancer

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Thursday, 08 April 2021, 06:49

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From the moment the suspected lesion is diagnosed, too much time passes.

Doctor examines a point of interest (Photo: ShutterStock)

Although skin cancer has become less common in recent years due to great awareness of sun damage, the disturbing truth is that every month an average of 150 new melanoma patients are added in Israel, and about 15 of them die from the disease.

Melanoma is the most dangerous and deadly of the various skin cancers, and now a new Israeli development seeks to allow its rapid diagnosis, which may save lives.

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In the laboratory of Prof. Avraham Katzir from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University, optical technology has been developed that can distinguish between types of skin cancer: melanoma or less dangerous cancers.

It is a diagnosis that is made quickly, non-invasively, and does not cause pain at all.

The new technology has been successfully tested on about 100 patients in Israel, and the study about it was published in the journal Medical Physics.

A quick diagnosis can save lives

In the case of melanoma, a quick diagnosis can save lives.

When detected by routine examination by a suspected dermatologist, it is removed in a small operation and sent for laboratory testing.

A pathologist diagnoses the lesion and determines if it is melanoma.

When melanoma is detected early, when it is still superficial and less than 1 mm thick, and removed, then most patients recover. On the other hand, late diagnosis, when the thickness of melanoma is more than 1 mm, greatly reduces the chances of recovery and is life-threatening.

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"Melanoma is a life-threatening skin cancer," explains Prof. Katzir, "and therefore it is very important to diagnose it in advance, when it is still superficial. The innovative system will allow any dermatologist to automatically determine the nature of a suspected lesion, especially whether it is melanoma."

How It Works?

"The idea that guided us in the development of technology was that in the apparent field different materials have different colors, but in the infrared field different materials have a kind of other 'colors', depending on the chemical composition of each material," explains Prof. Katzir. To identify these 'colors', healthy skin, and each of the benign and malignant lesions, will have different 'colors' - which will make it possible to identify melanoma.

Each skin lesion has a different "color".

Diagnosis of melanoma in Prof. Katzir's laboratory (Photo: Tel Aviv University Spokeswoman)

Prof. Katzir's research group has developed unique optical fibers, which are transparent to infrared.

The group, in collaboration with physicist Prof. Yosef Reichlin of Ariel University, Dr. Max Platkov of the Nuclear Research Campus and Svetlana Basov of the Katzir group, has developed a system based on these fibers, suitable for skin measurement. red, and the other end touched lightly for a few seconds, touching the skin of a patient. fiber can immediately check the personal-interest angles "of the lesion.

the researchers conducted clinical trials were done on suspicious skin lesions in 100 patients, and physicists have performed with the new system of measurement The "color" of each of these lesions, before they were removed and sent for pathological examination.The researchers found that all lesions determined in pathology that are of a certain type, for example melanoma, have a typical infrared "color". .

"Potential for dramatic change"

"This technology provides a kind of fingerprint that allows a clear diagnosis of the various lesions, with the help of measuring the typical 'colors'," emphasizes Prof. Katzir, "In this way lesions can be diagnosed by optical, non-invasive method, so the doctor and patient get the result automatically and immediately. This is in contrast to the routine examination today, which involves surgery, and the pathological diagnosis takes a long time. "

Following the success of the study, researchers are now planning to validate the method in measurements on hundreds of patients.

"This system has the potential to make a dramatic difference in the diagnosis and treatment of skin cancer, and possibly other types of cancer," concludes Prof. Katzir. .

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