Oral cancer is the most common cancer in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and other parts of South Asia — and it accounts for more than 40 percent of cancer-related deaths in India. Detecting oral lesions at an earlier time increases survival rates for oral cancer. But with fewer than one dentist per 100,000 people in many of the world's rural areas, early diagnosis is not easy to achieve. Now, a low-cost smartphone device is being developed at Stanford University to facilitate early diagnosis of these preventable deaths, with no dentist visits required.
The smartphone device is about the size of a pack of gum, and could make it possible for millions of people who live in remote areas to get this imaging done as easily as snapping a photo on a smartphone. Dubbed the OScan , this oral cavity scanner consists of a mouth positioner, a circuit board, and two rows of fluorescent-light-emitting diodes. It can be attached to any smartphone's built-in camera, and allows an operator to take a high-resolution, panoramic image of a person's complete mouth cavity. The device's blue fluorescent light illuminates malignant cancer lesions so that they may easily be detected as dark spots. Images can be sent to experts for diagnosis anywhere in the world.
