There is another article now available. It is in the January 2012 issue of "A Reader's Digest" magazine.
Fighting MELANOMA
After noticing a mole on her ankle in 2000, Annette Cyr waited over a year before making an appointment with a dermatologist. “When I finally went in to see her,” says the Oakville Ont., resident, 39 years old at the time, “she said, ‘Oh, no, it’s nothing.’” A biopsy proved that verdict wrong. The spot was melanoma—the deadliest of skin cancers.
Cyr’s story is not unusual. Current methods for diagnosing melanoma can take weeks. But all this is changing. Scientists at the BC Cancer Agency have created a tool that can suss out a mole’s malignancy in minutes, right in a GP’s office. Dubbed the Verisante Aura (shown below), the device shines a ray of light at a mole or skin lesion and then uses a spectrometer to record an optical signal that can reveal compositional changes in the skin caused by cancer.
“This essentially extends the limits of human vision,” says Dr. Harvey Lui, a clinical scientist at the agency, and one of the groundbreaking device’s inventors.
Catching melanoma early can save lives. The American Cancer Society estimates a 97 percent, five-year survival rate for those treated for Stage IA melanoma. Those with stage IV? Fifteen to 20 percent.
“That something so small can become so life threatening is a wake-up call,” says Cyr, the founding director of the Melanoma Network of Canada and now cancer-free. “The sooner people get that call, the better.”
siliconinvestor.com |
