Cooperative Research CRAFT contract

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Co-operative Research (CRAFT) contract

IST-1999-57448
A new ICT-based diagnosis procedure
and tool set for early detection of
cervix cancer
Eduardo Merino MacDonnell

Lifelinger Consortium mermac_at_telefonica.ne
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http//www.lifelinger.net/menu/home.h
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The Social Problem

• Cervical cancer is the third most common type of
  cancer in women
• Approximately 4-5 of all women ageing 20-65 will
  have some form of pre-cancer lesion of the cervix

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The Social Problem

• Cervical cancer is the third most common type of
  cancer in women
• Approximately 4-5 of all women ageing 20-65 will
  have some form of pre-cancer lesion of the cervix
• Waiting is the hardest part. With the current
  diagnosis protocols women, sometimes, have to
  wait several weeks until getting a final
  diagnosis..

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The Social Problem

• Cervical cancer is the third most common type of
  cancer in women
• Approximately 4-5 of all women ageing 20-65 will
  have some form of pre-cancer lesion of the cervix
• Waiting is the hardest part. With the current
  diagnosis protocols women, sometimes, have to
  wait several weeks until getting a final
  diagnosis..
• Early diagnosis strongly increases the quality of
  life of women suffering the disease.
• 5-years survival rate of 85 when early detected.
• In untreated or unresponsive cervical cancer
  death occurs 95 of the time within 2 years of
  the onset of symptoms

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The Medical Problem

• Pap smear
• Sensitivity and specificity have been questioned
• False negative rates up to 30

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The Medical Problem

• Pap smear
• Sensitivity and specificity have been questioned
• False negative rates up to 30
• Colposcopy
• Extreme subtleties of distinction between
  pathologic and non-pathologic lesion patterns.
• Need acetic acid and Lugol solution application.
• Inter and intra-observer variations (less that
  50 of lesions are agreed by all observers)

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The Medical Problem

• Pap smear
• Sensitivity and specificity have been questioned
• False negative rates up to 30
• Colposcopy
• Extreme subtleties of distinction between
  pathologic and non-pathologic lesion patterns.
• Need acetic acid and Lugol solution application.
• Inter and intra-observer variations (less that
  50 of lesions are agreed by all observers)
• Scarcity of trained medical personnel

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So the need is for a diagnosis procedures

• Easy to apply
• With good cost/benefits rates
• Providing little or no discomfort to women
• Having high sensitivity and specificity
• With good acceptance by Doctors

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Lifelinger objectives are

• The development of a new cervix cancer early
  diagnosis procedure based on image analysis
• The workstation will act as an add-on to the
  standard doctors equipment.
• To help less trained doctors in early diagnosing
  of cervix cancer with little or no modification
  of more experienced doctors.

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In the tissues during the development of the
disease we can see

• Change in haemoglobin concentration.
• Increase of cells nuclei size.
• Cells nuclei pleomorfism
• Increase of the content of cells nuclei chromatin
• Blood vessels modification

as a kind of optical signature that Lifelinger
analyse in order to sort tissues
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In order to detect abnormal tissues relies on the
combination of different technologies

• Image Analysis.
• Data Fusion.
• Knowledge Based Systems.
• Data Bases.
• Statistical Analysis.
• Network operation.

materialised in 3 different products
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• Workstation
• Hardware
• PC o Lap-Top

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• Workstation
• Hardware
• PC or Lap-Top
• CCD camera and light source

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• Workstation
• Hardware
• PC o Lap-Top
• CCD camera and light source
• Colposcope
• Software

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• A central Data Base
• With increasing quantity of cases
• Performing statistical analysis in order to
  improve detection parameters

• Workstation
• Hardware
• PC o Lap-Top
• CCD camera and light source
• Colposcope
• Software

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• A central Data Base
• With increasing quantity of cases
• Performing statistical analysis in order to
  improve detection parameters

• Workstation
• Hardware
• PC o Lap-Top
• CCD camera and light source
• Colposcope
• Software

• Network operation
• Evolving, extensible software
• Updated parameters
• Additional Functionality
• Sharing medical Expertise

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The working procedure is as follows

• The doctor performs colposcopy in the usual way.
• The cervix image is captured by means of the
  camera attached to the colposcope and displayed
  on the computer screen.
• At any time during examination, the doctor can
  analyse the captured image.
• The result of analysis is shown on the computer
  screen as a colour-coded overlay over the cervix
  image highlighting areas of pathologically
  significant tissues.

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Adding Lifelinger to current colposcopy procedure
will allow

• Improve early diagnosis rates.
• Reduce waiting time to get the diagnosis.
• Reduce prophylactics costs.

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Lifelinger

• Imagination is more important than knowledge
• Albert Einstein