There’s a long history of technology originally developed for the military later being put to use in the civilian world. GPS, radar technology (microwave), canned food, and digital cameras, to name just a few. In a continuation of the trend of camera technology first developed for the military going on to be used in civilian life, scientists have now adapted drone cameras to a new and potentially life-saving purpose – spotting cancer cells.
The cameras developed for military drones have to be able to pick up on an extraordinary level of detail to effective, which means they can see things beyond the capabilities of the human eye. Colours, for example, are observed by the cameras in much higher resolution.
A recent study published in the Cancer Research journal detailed how this allowed drone cameras to differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells. The research involved people at increased risk of oesophageal cancer, looking for early warning signs cancerous cells were beginning to develop.
Our eyes are sensitive to red, green and blue and fulfil our evolutionary needs but they don’t do a good job distinguishing between healthy and diseased tissue. Cambridge University’s Dale Waterhouse explains that while “everything just looks a pinkish red colour” to us, there are in fact many distinct shades of that pinkish red.
We don’t see the differences but the multispectral imaging of the drone cameras can. Instead of looking at red, green and blue as we do, multispectral cameras break the spectrum down into dozens of shades. In military drones, spectral imaging is used to spot camouflaged objects or subtle changes to land surface that could suggest mines have been buried.
Dr Waterhouse, now a Research Fellow in the Surgical Robot Vision Group at the Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS) at University College London (UCL), was involved in the research while writing his PhD thesis (titled Novel Optical Endoscopes for Early Cancer Diagnosis and Therapy) at Cambridge.
The research team he was part of trained a multispectral drone camera to distinguish between healthy and diseased tissue. an endoscope. It was then used with people with Barrett’s oesophagus, a condition that means they are at high risk of developing cancer and need regular check-ups.
The research indicated the drone cameras were ten times more effective in spotting tell-tale contrasts in tissue shade than the normal optical cameras currently used to spot cancers. A further application is expected to be helping surgeons understand if all cancerous tissue has been removed during surgery.
Dr Waterhouse explains:
“You could use multispectral imaging to look at the tissue during surgery, to outline tumours and then, once surgery is complete, look at the site and see if there’s any remaining.”