World's Fastest Camera Can Detect Rare Cancer Cells

Researchers at UCLA have developed an optical microscope camera using advanced microfluidics technology and real-time processing to analyze blood samples. The original 2009 model was upgraded to a higher throughput of 100,000 cells a second, around 100 times faster than its counterparts, rendering it the fastest camera in the world. Such a high throughput makes the camera eligible of detecting rare cancer cells in blood with statistical accuracy.

Early detection of diseases like Cancer is instrumental in the process of curing it, but due to the lack of advanced monitoring devices, detecting a handful of rogue cells between a billion healthy cells becomes practically impossible. The technique developed by UCLA Researchers makes this task possible with an automated, high-throughput system.

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While digital cameras are the norm for analyzing cells, they fall short for this application. Traditional CCD and CMOS cameras do not function optimally at high speed as they become less sensitive to light with high speed. The team of researchers led by Jalali and Dino Di Carlo, a UCLA associate professor of bioengineering, defeated these shortcomings by developing an optical microscope with sensitivity of one part per million in real time.

Their research has proved successful with real-time identification of rare breast cancer cells in blood with a record low false-positive rate of one cell in a million and is currently undergoing further validation.

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