Within the field of medicine, the presence of some type of cancer is not an easy task, it requires various studies to confirm this, which takes time and is sometimes annoying invasive and patient studies. Therefore, one of the key issues to be pursued in recent developments is doing promptly and efficiently, because the time factor is crucial in this type of diseases.
Under this idea, a project developed jointly by the University of Tokyo and the University of Harvard, consisting arises an advanced pressure sensor capable of bending, which adapts to the fingers as if it were a glove, and which serve to detect tumors early.
The replacement of mammograms
The pressure sensors are not new, there are developments in recent years, where the main problem is its lack of efficiency once folded, making them useful only on flat surfaces, not curves, plus they do not work on surfaces moving.
Now thanks to this development could be a breakthrough especially in the detection of breast cancer, which today is almost entirely dependent on mammography, a painful and invasive study that follows the touch detection. With this new sensor, the idea is to avoid mammograms because everything would be detected immediately by a tactile study by the sensors can be adapted to the fingers for an exam.
The sensor will be able to identify normal breast tumors and one that by simply applying a small pressure as is a digital palpitation measured up to 144 locations at a time. Its thickness is just eight micrometers (thousandths of a millimeter) and is made of organic transistors, electronic switches made of carbon and oxygen, and a structure of pressure sensitive nano-fibers.
This means it can accurately measure radii up to 80 microns, overcome the barrier of 100 micrometers who had previous sensors. But surely the element that makes it more attractive is its flexibility, which can measure various parts of the human body regardless bending.
Sungwon Lee, a project leader at the University of Harvard, said:
“We tested the performance of our sensor in an artificial blood vessel and found that it can detect even small changes in pressure and speed of the pressure to spread.”
Unfortunately, the limiting factor in the price and availability of materials, including leather are fluorine and carbon nano-tubes and graphene for driving, it makes large-scale production is almost impossible today, therefore, its creators are working on a solution to use other materials. Meanwhile, they have predicted to have a final version to market sometime in 2019.
