The European Union recently made a CORDIS Award for €3,099,481 for Non-Invasive Optical Biopsy for Cancer Assessment using ultra high resolution Full-Field Optical Coherence Tomography. The principal investigator is Fabrice Harms from LLTech. The program starts in 2012 and ends in 2015. Below is a summary of the proposed work. For more information see this link.

Along the cancer care workflow, existing preoperative and intraoperative procedures such as the identification of small tumourous areas or the precise resection of tumours show significant fail rates, due to the inability of current imaging techniques to perform a reliable in situ diagnosis. Moreover the complete pathological diagnosis, often based on histology slides preparation, is usually only available after a few days. For these reasons a significant number of patients need to undergo secondary biopsy or surgery. The CAReIOCA project aims at providing pathologists and/or surgeons novel non-invasive optical imaging at the cellular scale for fast cancer assessment. By providing images approaching the level of information of histology slides during localization, biopsy and resection procedures in real or near-real time, the technique is expected to significantly improve cancer care. The project will combine latest advances in CMOS technology and "optical biopsy" techniques to overcome the current technical limitations of an unequalled performance non-invasive tissue imaging technique: Full-Field Optical Coherence Tomography (FFOCT). The key technological achievement of the project will consist of the development of a specific high-performance CMOS smart camera, and will lead to the development, clinical adaptation and pre-clinical validation of a novel optical biopsy probe, exhibiting in-depth imaging capabilities and a record 3D resolution. The technique will provide a fast and reliable method to visualize pathological or suspicious areas, and corresponding microstructures, in real-time. In particular, it will enable pre-operative diagnosis, biopsy guidance, as well as intra-operative, large-scale surgical margin assessment. These applications are expected to significantly reduce reoperation rates of corresponding procedures. In this view, pre-clinical validation on Oral and Breast Cancer will be performed.  For more information see this LINK.

LLTECH systems allow in-depth digital imaging directly from gross fresh, fixed or frozen tissue. No tissue staining or modification is required. Images are provided in 2D or 3D DICOM format. The high-speed, high-resolution tissue architecture imaging target direct tissue and biopsy qualification (normal, fibrosis, collagen, suspicious areas, fat…) for applications such as research, bio banking or intra operative sample selection. www.lltechimaging.com

About LLTech

LLTech is a privately owned company founded in 2007. LLTech vision is to become the leader in real time, safe, non-destructive optical biopsies and cellular level tissue imaging for research and clinical applications (micro biopsies assessment, surgical margins…). Using the properties of white light and optics the Light-CT research scanner generates DICOM 3D high-resolution three-dimensional images of tissue microstructure, without introducing artifacts. http://www.lltechimaging.com