Detecting Cancer Without Drawing Blood

An anonymous reader informs us of research out of Purdue that allows for early detection of cancer without a blood sample. The technique involves shining laser light on surface veins, such as those in the wrist or cheek.

Use a dog

[jag7720]

Dogs have been used to sniff out cancer patience for a long time... plus they are a lot more friendly and playful than a laser.

Re:This was already posted ./

[GeckoX]

What're you asking for exactly?
It's very common for there to be multiple versions of the same story in the firehose, editors pick the best.

In this case, they picked the one that linked to the actual news release, not to a secondary news source as you suggest they should have.

Sample Size

[the eric conspiracy]

The real advantage of this technique is that it allows measurement of a larger size sample. There is still an injection of the florescent label, but by scanning the body surface a much larger blood sample can be monitored which makes this method more sensitive - making detection at an early stage better.

Re:Next step - zapping?

[Maximum Prophet]

I was thinking the exact same thing, using something like a gamma knife. Gamma rays have a wavelength much smaller than cells, so you could use several beams to target individual cells. Each beam wouldn't be lethal, but when combined, they would kill the cell. There are techniques using femto-second lasers to release the laser energy at a specific depth. Now, all you need is a femto-second gamma ray laser...

Re:This was already posted ./

[GeckoX]

Yeah, that's kinda exactly what I was getting at...there was no reasonable justification for suggesting that the article he linked to in the firehose should have taken precedent in getting picked for the main page...definitely suspect an ulterior motive there.

Re:New?

[ColdWetDog]

This is not a screening test. You have to know exactly what cancer you have, make tagged cells with the correct antibodies to said cancer, inject those cells and then the Magic Machine counts them. You could conceivably use this to screen for a specific cancer if you did all that work to make the target, but I really doubt that will ever prove practical.

This would be for evaluating treatments of known cancers.