DEALS DEALS
PROJECT EL-0410S
NEAR INFRA-RED IMAGING
A pioneering new technology which allows for early screening for tumours and cancers has been developed - in a portable, safe format affordable to hospitals and GPs the world over.
Tumors and cancer are, tragically, words we come across all too often in daily life - and there are few of us who will remain unaffected by them during our lives, indeed if we haven’t been already, whether it is through family, friends or even ourselves. Each year there are 22,000 new cases of malignant brain tumors, over half of which will cause a fatality. Breast cancer is the second highest cause of cancer related death among women in the United States of America. Brain injuries also cause many thousands of deaths each year - a large number of which are preventative; the issue is with detection. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force just recently challenged the American Cancer Society’s yearly mammogram recommendation, claiming it to be too dangerous. Researchers, in December of 2009, said that, “Radiation from CT scans done in 2007 will cause 29,000 cancers and kill nearly 15,000 Americans. The findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, add to mounting evidence that Americans are overexposed to radiation from diagnostic tests, especially from a CT, scan”. And therein lies the rub - the only way to test for these cancers and to check for the extent of brain injuries is through potentially harmful techniques using pre-existing and somewhat dated technology (infra-red was discovered in the early 19th century and didn’t come into wider commercial use until the 1950s). The American Cancer Society stated that, “The key to beating cancer is early detection”. Near Infrared Imaging, LLC have developed a groundbreaking piece of new patented technology which offers up a solution to these problems. The NIR Image 2700 is a lighweight, portable near infrared camera that detects and determines the presence, size and location of a hematoma or shrapnel in the brain, an intracranial brain tumor or lesion, a malignant tumor in the human breast and the presence of Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) in the human breast. The device creates a real time three dimensional image sent to a laptop PC that can be instantly sent to a hospital or a physician.
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The first hour after any type of brain injury is critically important; known as the ‘golden hour,’ it relates to the period anywhere between a few minutes and a few hours of a serious trauma, during which time treatment is far more likely to prevent death. It is impossible using existing technology to determine any type of brain injury at the scene of an accident. The NIR Image 2700 aims to save tens of thousands of lives by going directly to the patient on site, in the home, on the battlefield or in the school, allowing doctors to work more quickly and better prepare themselves for a patient.
Usage for babies is also hugely significant. CT scans and X-rays are potentially incredibly harmful to the baby, MRIs are virtually impossible due to
Ò Previously the only way to test for these cancers is through potentially harmful techniques using dated technologyÓ
the overwhelming noise from the machines and the difficulty in keeping the baby still.
This is clearly a product with a huge number of applications, and the majority of those life-saving. It can detect tumors in the breast a fifth smaller (2mm) than the average size identified using the existing technique. IBC is rare and there are differences in its symptoms - making it virtually impossible to detect using current technology. It requires immediate aggressive treatment with chemotherapy and surgery. According to data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, women diagnosed with this type of cancer between ’88 and ’01, had a five year survival rate of 40%; this is in direct contrast to the 87% five year survival rate for all other breast cancers combined.
The market is clearly huge - there isn’t a hospital
THE -ELEVATOR.COM THE -ELEVATOR.COM
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