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Skin cancers are nowadays the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer.
Early diagnosis increases the chances of successful treatment.
VIAMOS aims to improve this situation with a low cost, handheld
instrument for Optical Coherence Tomography
Indeed,
current non-invasive alternatives to traditional biopsy
are not sufficiently developed for clinical diagnosis of skin pathologies.
Current imaging techniques suffer from low resolutions or short depth penetrations.
Moreover they usually remain an expensive bulky system that only a few hospitals can afford.
Novel MOEMS technologies enable the miniaturization of such systems.
MOEMS stands for Micro,
Optical
and Electro-Mechanical Systems
MOEMS technology uses specific materials
and micro-fabrication processes to integrate different types of components
on one or several wafers.
In addition, batch fabrication enables a significant decrease of the price.
VIAMOS takes benefit of this technology to design a miniaturized
Optical Coherence Tomograph system
meeting specific clinical needs.
This system has to be able to effectively detect skin pathologies and help dermatologist
in their diagnosis.
The aim of the project
is to obtain a system with a lateral resolution of five micrometers,
maintaining a fast acquisition for 3D tomography.
Moreover the accessibility of this system to any dermatologist and physicians is a major point.
In this perspective, Viamos project aims to fabricate a system with a price 10 times
lower than bulky systems and also 150 times smaller.
VIAMOS is an European collaborative project
bringing together an experienced consortium made of two academic institutions
with the University of Franche-Comté
and the University of Stuttgart,
three research institutes with VTT of Finland,
the Fraunhofer Institute from Chemnitz, and CSEM from Neuchatel,
as well two companies which are DermoScan and Statice.
This consortium is covering the MEMS and MOEMS technologies,
photonics and Optical Coherence Tomography, the microscopy,
the system integration and the dermatology.