Point-of-care and point-of-procedure optical imaging technologies for primary care and global health

Abstract

Leveraging advances in consumer electronics and wireless telecommunications, low-cost, portable optical imaging devices have the potential to improve screening and detection of disease at the point of care in primary health care settings in both low- and high-resource countries. Similarly, real-time optical imaging technologies can improve diagnosis and treatment at the point of procedure by circumventing the need for biopsy and analysis by expert pathologists, who are scarce in developing countries. Although many optical imaging technologies have been translated from bench to bedside, industry support is needed to commercialize and broadly disseminate these from the patient level to the population level to transform the standard of care. This review provides an overview of promising optical imaging technologies, the infrastructure needed to integrate them into widespread clinical use, and the challenges that must be addressed to harness the potential of these technologies to improve health care systems around the world.

Point-of-care mobile digital microscopy and deep learning for the detection of soil-transmitted helminths and Schistosoma haematobium

“…When planning and developing strategies for deployment, other factors such as development of training programs for technicians operating the device, clinical guidelines for usage and regular maintenance procedures need to be taken into consideration. Wider-scale implementation of novel technologies furthermore requires a coordinated effort from researchers, funders and policy-makers to ensure sustained access and availability [38]. …”

Visualizing myocardial inflammation in a rat model of type 4 cardiorenal syndrome by dual-modality molecular imaging

“…The PLL functionalization also enabled a superior conjugation of Rhodamine B, a fluorescence dye, on the particle surface to establish a dual-modality MNP. Although there are several limitations to the clinical translation of optical imaging, this technique offers many unique advantages over radiological technologies, such as non-radioactive irradiation, low cost and high sensitivity [46]. In addition, much progress has been made in the translation of macroscopic optical imaging into clinical applications, including image-guided surgery [47] and image-guided endoscopy and biopsy [48].…”

Medical mobile technologies – what is needed for a sustainable and scalable implementation on a global scale?

“…A picture is worth a thousand words, which clearly also holds true within mobile health. A large number of mobile health solutions have been presented within this field, including applications for emergency medicine, surgery, otolaryngology, ophthalmology, dermatology, radiology, pathology and general medicine [4]. Specific applications such as burn injury consultation [5], oral cancer diagnostics [6], diagnosis of middle-ear infections [7], refraction tests and cataract assessment (Eyenetra, Somerville, MA), skin cancer detection (SkinVision, SkinVision BV, Amsterdam, Netherlands and MoleScope, MetaOptima, Vancouver, BC) and parasite and cancer microscopy-based diagnosis [8–10] to name a few.…”

“…Based on the literature [4,11,18,20–23] and our own experiences we have identified the following factors as critical in creating sustainable and scalable solutions within the field of mobile and connected health:…”