Smart scope
Huikai Xie, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, displays a micro-endoscope developed in his laboratory at the University of Florida. Smaller than a pencil eraser, the device contains a scanner that can “see” beneath the surface of internal tissues. The goal is to reveal abnormal groups of cells before cancerous growths are big enough to be spotted by traditional camera-equipped endoscopes. “Right now, endoscopes just take pictures of the surface tissue. So, if you see some injury, or abnormality, on the surface, that’s good,” Xie said. “But most of the time, particularly with cancer, the early stages of disease are not so obvious. The technology we are developing is basically to see under the surface, under the epithelial layer.”
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