January 17, 2014—Medical device company Michelson Diagnostics (Orpington, Kent, England) announced this week a €2.26 million Framework 7 award to advance the company’s VivoSight scanners. The European Union granted the money to help the company and its consortium of seven partners with its project to use its multibeam optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology to diagnose malignant melanoma.
The goal of the project, called Automatic Detection of VAscular Networks for Cancer Evaluation (ADVANCE), is to assess how VivoSight multibeam OCT imaging scanners can be used to assess melanomas and their aggressiveness quickly and efficiently. Michelson Diagnostics is the lead partner in the ADVANCE project. Industrial partner EG Technology (Cambridge, England) will collaborate with Michelson on the hardware design for the system, while Technology Partnership doo (Belgrade, Serbia) is on tap to develop the visualization software. Michelson Diagnostics will develop the core algorithms needed to detect the vessels.
Clinicians can already use VivoSight on patients to noninvasively view through layers of skin in great detail in real time. The project aims to develop VivoSight scanning systems to collect and identify images of melanomas in real time. The system will obtain high-resolution images of melanoma tumors, detect vessels that supply them, and display 3D maps of the surrounding vessels. Early detection of these abnormal vessel patterns, according to the company, could revolutionize melanoma detection and treatment by reducing the number of unnecessary early-stage invasive procedures, and may also save lives as patients receive urgent treatment sooner.
Michelson Diagnostics is also teaming up with several clinicians in Europe who will clinically evaluate the results.
The VivoSight technology may also have other clinical applications, including identification and monitoring of inflammation and in wound healing, according to the company.