Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a high-speed image processor that can take blur-free images of fast-moving cells, a requisite to identifying cancer cells. In one milliliter of blood, there are about 5B red blood cells, 10M white blood cells but only 10 tumor cells. When cells break away from a cancerous tumor, they circulate throughout the body, spreading the cancer. The microscopic camera’s shutter speed is an ultrafast 27 picoseconds, allowing identification of cancerous cells in a relatively short time. (A picosecond it one trillionth of a second.) Early detection of cancer would then be as easy as doing a blood test. Other research works are even more promising, targeting precancerous cells.
Read the article at: Scientific American.
via popsci
