Endoscopy is a minimally invasive diagnostic medical procedure that uses an endoscope, a medical device that consists of a long thin flexible tube, to examine the interior surfaces of an organ or tissue without surgery. Besides conventional endoscopy, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) are current diagnostic imaging modalities for the detection of local and distant relapse of cancers. All currently existing solutions have a number of limitations including the limited detection of small tumors, high costs, and poor resolution of tumors that are not metabolically active. A terahertz (THz) endoscope system, developed by UML researchers, can alleviate many of these limitations for the examination and detection of cancerous or precancerous regions of biological tissue.
Dr. Robert Giles and team have developed a technique to image intrinsic contrast between abnormal and normal tissue based on the terahertz reflectivity values acquired using a continuous-wave terahertz polarization sensitive endoscope.
The THz endoscope is comprised of three parts; a terahertz transceiver system to generate and detect the signal using a coherent detection technique, system optics to guide the beam as per coupling requirements, and a flexible low-loss hollow metal coated waveguide for propagating the THz beam. A single channel will transmit and collect the back reflected intrinsic THz signal from the sample, which will enable lower system costs, simpler data analysis, and fast data acquisition rates. The invention also minimizes non-sample signals and system noise from the generated images.
The global endoscopy equipment market was valued at $24.32 billion in 2016 and is projected to reach $34.82 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 6.4% during the forecasted period.
Robert Giles serves as Chairman of the Physics Department at UMass Lowell and Principal Investigator of the university’s Submillimeter-Wave Technology Laboratory (STL). STL is a leader of terahertz transmitter and receiver technologies and was recently granted a five-year, $27 million renewal grant from the U.S. Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center. Giles research interests include terahertz spectroscopic imaging, material science, and biomedical imaging instrumentation.
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