Laser and Ultrasound Co-Analyzer for thyroid nodules

Objective

This is a trans-disciplinary project that joins endocrinologists (“end-users”), radiologists (“end-users”), physicists who are
experts in medical photonics, engineers who are experts in photonics and ultrasonics and the industry to work towards a
concentrated goal - to produce a novel, point-of-care, low-cost, screening device that combines two photonics systems
(near-infrared diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) and time-resolved spectroscopy (TRS)) with a multi-modal ultrasound
(US) system and a probe that enables multi-modal data acquisition for the screening of thyroid nodules (TN) for thyroid
cancer (TC). TN are a common pathology having a prevalence of palpable nodules around 5% in women and 1% in men,
that increases to 19-76% with the use of neck US. In screening thyroid nodules, to exclude thyroid cancer which occurs in
5-15% of TN, the first step is the US followed by fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) of suspicious nodules. The sensitivity
and specificity of this process in thyroid cancer are limited, with a large number of non-diagnostic and false positive results
that lead to unnecessary surgeries. A reduction in the number of surgeries with a point-of-care diagnostic procedure would
have an important socio-economic impact, diminishing the number of thyroidectomies and the associated comorbidities. This
implies savings of millions of euros per year. Evidence shows that multi-modal approaches that include hemodynamic
information leads to better specificity while each modality on its own fails. We hypothesize that a new optical-ultrasound
probe and integrated system enabled by the development of novel, key enabling photonic components and sub-systems to
provide synergetic information on tissue morphology, composition and function will have a large impact in this field. Our
action is directed by end-users who participate in the proposal and will be exploited by the industrial partners who cover the
whole value-chain.

Field of science

• /medical and health sciences/basic medicine/pathology
• /medical and health sciences/clinical medicine/surgery
• /natural sciences/chemical sciences/analytical chemistry/spectroscopy
• /natural sciences/physical sciences/acoustics/ultrasound
• /medical and health sciences/clinical medicine/oncology/cancer
• /natural sciences/physical sciences/optics/laser physics

Programme(s)

• H2020-EU.2.1.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Topic(s)

• ICT-28-2015 - Cross-cutting ICT KETs

Call for proposal

H2020-ICT-2015
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Coordinator

Participants (7)