If you want to get a mole checked to see if it's cancerous, it usually involves getting a bit of your skin cut off and sent to a lab for a biopsy.
However thanks to research led by Irene Georgakoudi, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University Massachusetts, and Dr. Dimitra Pouli, a new non-invasive technique means patients could one day get their skin examined under a special microscope and, in just a few minutes, know whether they have cancer- according to a new study.
The ground-breaking technique involves a high-resolution microscope that allows doctors to see the patient's mitochondria— the powerhouses of the cell, which "often form beautiful networks inside cells," said the study's lead investigator, Irene Georgakoudi, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Because cancer disrupts this "beautiful network," and leads the mitochondria to become unorganised, doctors peering into the mitochondria could potentially diagnose skin cancer and other disorders based on what they see, Georgakoudi said.
