Team improves endoscopes for earlier cancer detection

University of Arizona faculty and students worked together to redesign an endoscope that may improve imaging and cancer detection. In a paper published in Biophotonics Discovery, the team describes a reworked imager that may help detect ovarian cancer in its early stages. 

"We performed a comprehensive redesign of a first-generation endoscope prototype and demonstrated its performance in whole, human ex vivo fallopian tubes," the paper explains. "The cell-acquiring fallopian endoscope was designed to detect and interrogate potentially pathological sites in the fallopian tubes via alterations in fluorescence signal and the collection of epithelial cells." 

The team of scientists includes BME professor Jennifer Barton, a long-time researcher in the field of endoscopes, Photini Rice, a U of A laboratory manager and research specialist, and Dilara Long, BME doctoral student and MD/PhD candidate at the U of A College of Medicine – Tucson