Design, fabrication and testing of a smartphone-based bimodal device for oral precancer diagnosis

Abstract

Oral cancer is among the top three types of cancers in India which accounts for about 30 percent of all types of cancer. We propose here a portable and cost-effective 3D printed smartphone based bimodal (spectroscopy and imaging) device for detection of oral cancer at an early stage. The device has the ability to perform fluorescence spectroscopy and imaging on a single platform using smartphone as an optical spectrometer and a CMOS camera respectively. A miniature 405 nm laser diode has been used as a source. Fluorescence spectra and images of some known fluorophores such as fluorescein, rhodamine, flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) and proto-porphyrin (PpIX) have been recorded using the proposed smartphone-based device for validation. The wavelength resolution of device for spectral measurements is 0.25 nm per pixel in the visible range and for imaging the total area captured at the detector is 1cm 2 . Preliminary studies have been performed on patients with oral precancer and cancer to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed system for in-vivo diagnosis of the disease at an early stage.