NIH Highlights Kang's Cancer-Detecting Smartphone Microscopes

The Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health recently highlighted assistant BME professor and BIO5 member Dongkyun "DK" Kang's work developing a smartphone microscope that detects cancer. Kang received a NIH grant to develop the microscopes to enable instant and affordable diagnoses of certain cancers in rural areas.

According to Fogarty, the device was used to examine participants' skin lesions and samples to look for Kaposi's sarcoma during a pilot study in Uganda. The smartphone confocal microscopes improve access to and the speed of diagnoses for cancer, and only cost about $4,200, as compared to nearly $100,000 for a commercial confocal microscope.

“We're streamlining the process to enable onsite, real-time, single-visit diagnoses," Kang said. “Now the patient doesn't have to come back to the rural clinic or hospital. We can catch them when they are there... We can take a look at the tissue on the spot – no biopsy needed, no return visit needed – so a clinician can decide whether to treat or monitor immediately.”

Kang is using a second Fogarty grant to develop an inexpensive smartphone endoscope to screen for cervical cancer.

The eventual plan for the microscopes is to develop an app powered by artificial intelligence to analyze images and either guide or provide diagnoses.