Cancer of the pancreas : an app that detects it in the white of the eye

Ubiquitous Computing Lab/University of Washington

Published the 01.09.2017 at 17h21

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Keywords :

cancer pancréasapplication santésmartphone

A smartphone app would enable to improve the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Developed by a team from the university of Washington (United States), this digital tool, called BiliScreen, is able to detect the early signs of the disease in the white of the eye from a simple selfie.
An innovation which will be presented at the congress of computing Ubicomp September 13.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly. In France, 11,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, and nearly 9,000 people die from the disease. Five years after diagnosis, 9 % of the patients are still alive.
Chances of survival very low, because of the difficulty in identifying the disease. When symptoms appear, it is already too late. The tumour has already had time to spread to other organs.

Detect jaundice prior to his appearance

The team from the university of Washington has therefore sought to develop a tool capable of taking speed the disease. To get there, they focused on one of the signs the earlier the cancer : jaundice. Caused by a significant concentration of bilirubin in the blood, jaundice results in a yellow coloration of the skin and of the sclera (white of the eye). The objective of the researchers was to find this sign well before patients take on a yellowish tint visible to the naked eye.

The procedure should be reproducible in all patients, regardless of their skin color. The researchers therefore decided to probe their sclera, the outer membrane of the eye. “The eyes are a gateway very interesting in the human body,” says Shwetak Patel, professor of engineering and a member of the project BiliScreen. The tears can tell us the rate of glucose and the sclera the blood levels of bilirubin. “