Italian defense firm Galileo Avionica this week held a press briefing to introduce the U.S. market to TRIMprob, a handheld device that uses microwaves to detect malignant tissue, the manufacturer claims.
TRIMprob is based on work conducted by an Italian researcher, Clarbruno Vedruccio, who designed a detector for nonmetallic land mines and plastic explosives. Vedruccio believed that the technology, called Hybrid State Maser, could be used to locate diseased tissue in humans. He teamed with Galileo Avionica to develop a prototype.
TRIMprob consists of a plastic baton that produces a beam of microwaves that are beamed through a patient at very low power, similar to the way a metal detector is used to frisk airline passengers. The beam interacts with tissues at a microscopic level, and a computer linked to the probe analyzes the amount of interference at different frequencies and displays results in real time in a graphical format.
Italian clinicians believe that the system could be useful for mass screenings undertaken to identify patients who should be sent on for more refined tests. In clinical trials at San Carlo Borromeo Hospital in Milan, TRIMprob was able to predict prostate tumors in 93% of patients that were later confirmed by biopsy. Clinical trials are underway in Italy for other applications.
By AuntMinnie.com staff writersJuly 23, 2003
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