Bowel cancer has the highest global mortality rates among other forms of cancer. According to Digestive Cancers Europe, bowel cancer is the second deadliest cancer, approximately 170,000 people dying every year, in the European Union. Survival rates vary across European countries due to national variations in healthcare and locally provided treatment strategies. Although early cancer detection can significantly improve patients’ outcomes, most of the patients were detected at a late stage. If more patients are diagnosed at an early stage (from the current 13% to 50%), 130,000 more lives could be saved per year and more than €3b in healthcare budget can be saved. Thus, in order to fulfil the Sustainable Development Goal of Good Health and Well-Being identified by the United Nations, significantly improve the survival rates, and reduce the heavy burden of bowel cancer on patients, the healthcare systems and the wider economy, more effective screening techniques and programmes for early detection must be in place in all countries in Europe.
Lower gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopies, which examine the colon for detection of premalignant and malignant changes through visualisation of the colonic mucosa, comprise more than 50% of the demand for endoscopies. Despite major advances in image acquisition and processing over recent decades, the basic design and ergonomics of endoscopes have barely changed in more than 40 years. It is less reliable for small pedunculated polyps and for sessile serrated lesions which are not easily visualised. Endoscopy remains challenging for both clinicians and patients. Some GI patients experience significant pain during procedures, which require a team of clinicians to sedate and monitor patients, and to maintain and decontaminate increasingly complex and expensive devices. For clinicians to acquire safely the required expertise and practice, lengthy training periods (2-5 years) and highly developed professional regulatory frameworks are required. Therefore, in GI endoscopic practice, there is an urgent need for new modalities that are safe, painless, accurate and reliable, which requires minimal training for practitioners.
This fellowship seeks to develop a new mathematical tool for analysing the sensing capability of micro-robots to aid the detection of hard-to-visualise bowel lesions. In the long term, this work aims to initiate a new modality for bowel cancer screening, delivering an efficient minimally invasive procedure for patients.
After an in-depth study of the robot-tumour interactions, the findings reveal significant changes in robot's dynamics when the robot encounters different circular folds and tumours. Such a correlation between the dynamical characteristics of the robot and the tumour’s mechanical properties proves the potential of utilising a vibrational capsule robot for early detection of bowel cancer.
