STTR Phase I: Point-of-Care Skin Cancer Imaging Device

Award ID: 2112267

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) Phase I project is to develop an affordable tool to image the skin over its depth while offering large contrasts between normal, malignant, and benign tissues. Such a device will be an invaluable assistance to dermatologists and dermatologic surgeons and significantly enhance the current state of skin cancer detection and management. The proposed system will be integrated in a single framework, resulting in a compact (handheld) and real-time imager at a low manufacturing cost. This will make the proposed technology comparable in cost to dermoscopic imaging, facilitating its widespread use and application. The proposed device will also be able to identify tumor margins in the millimeter-wave images of skin lesions. This capability will simplify the tumor removal surgery to a single-layer excision procedure. The proposed imager will be used by dermatologists and dermatologic surgeons prior to biopsy or tumor excision, facilitating the detection and removal of tumors. This Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) Phase I project is focused on developing a fully-integrated ultra-wideband millimeter-wave imaging system for the first time. This will be realized by employing the synthetic ultra-wideband imaging approach, where several disjointed, adjacent imaging sub-bands are integrated to collectively form an ultra-wide imaging bandwidth. Each sub-band contains a transmitting and a receiving element that operate only within that specific sub-band. In this research, the RF front-ends of sub-band phased-array antennas will be developed and integrated with the transceiver components of the imaging system on a single chip. The developed phased arrays will be configured to radiate and collect RF frequencies over different frequency sub-bands, while forming independent beams with separate phase-shifting operations. Therefore, electronic beam-steering can be used for scanning the target region. In addition, a novel method for tumor margin identification in 3-D millimeter-wave images is proposed in which a-priori information about the statistical distribution of the dielectric properties of tissues is employed. This will result in a more accurate segmentation of the dielectric properties at a low computational cost. The ultra-wide bandwidth of the proposed imager will result in significantly higher image resolutions compared to the state-of-the-art millimeter-wave imaging technology. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Henry Ahn