Researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Systems
Biology have developed a smartphone -enabled Diagnostic Magnetic
Resonance, DMR, device described as the world’s smallest cancer
diagnostic system which has an accuracy rate of 96 percent compared to
84 percent for biopsy.
Presenting the device last week at the mHealth Summit in Washington,
D.C., Dr. Roderick Pettigrew Director of the Na tional Institute of
Health’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering,
said the handheld DMR device was evaluated in a clinical trial of 70
patients with suspected abdominal malignancy.
In a presentation entitled “State of the Science in Research on
Mobile Health Technologies,” Pettigrew recalled that in a recent
clinical study, the mobile-enabled diagnostic magnetic resonance had an
accuracy that was more than 12 percentage points higher than the
conventional “gold standard” of biopsy.
”We were driven to develop this device by two factors – the exquisite
sensitivity of magnetic resonance techniques like MRI and the desire to
detect cancer in very small cell samples,” he stated.
Patients in the study underwent a biopsy in addition to a minimally
invasive procedure known as fine needle aspiration, a mini biopsy that
collects cells rather than tissue.
Specimens collected from biopsies were sent toa lab for standard
diagnostic testing, while the as pirates were run through the DMR system
in what Pettigrew described as a “chemistry lab on a chip.” Not only
did the DMR provide more accurate cancer diagnosis, but it arrived at
its results quicker by enabling quantification of multiple protein
markers within an hour instead of three days.
“This smartphone-enabled technology is superior technology (to
standard diagnostic procedures) and is an example of the type of
rigorous evaluation that we need to establish the real value for these
mobile and wireless tools,” Pettigrew said.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
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