The Institute of Atomic Physics and Spectroscopy (ASI) at the University of Latvia (UL) has launched a project to improve healthcare for dermatology patients using advanced biophotonics methods and devices. On October 16, a kick-off event for the UL consolidation grant project “Whole-body Dermoscopic Imaging in the Visible and Infrared Spectrum” was held at the Academic Center for Natural Sciences. Attended by specialists in the field, the project’s action plan was discussed to develop a new diagnostic methodology for skin formations and to create a complex prototype device.
“The developed methodology and technological solutions will certainly help dermatologists perform higher-quality diagnostics of skin formations, thereby contributing to the overall improvement of public health, as it will enable the detection of skin formations much more quickly,” emphasizes Jānis Spīgulis, the scientific leader of the UL ASI project.
During the project, it is planned to create a complex prototype device for imaging large skin areas, practically covering the entire body, at four laser wavelengths: 450 nm, 520 nm, 638 nm, and 850 nm, as well as to conduct clinical approval of this device.
This combination of four spectral images allows for not only the rapid identification and classification of all skin formations in patients but also the identification of skin tumors (including melanoma), which are characterized by deeper penetration into skin tissues. This "depth probing" is made possible by the optical properties of the skin—blue light in the spectral range (450 nm) penetrates only a tenth of a millimeter into the skin, while radiation in the near-infrared spectrum (850 nm) reaches about 2 mm deep, thus capable of "seeing" deeper skin tumors.
The participants in the project already have established foundations for research in this direction; specifically, a prototype was developed and approved in the Innovation Fund project “MOTE,” funded by the Ministry of Economics, which can obtain skin images at three visible spectrum lines. The newly initiated project additionally aims to ensure the quality acquisition of whole-body spectral images in the near-infrared spectrum, which would be a novelty in global practice, as well as to develop appropriate software for processing spectral images of the skin and for rapid recognition of skin tumors.
Photo: Toms Grīnbergs, LU