{"id":223,"date":"2021-02-03T14:11:03","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T14:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/?p=223"},"modified":"2022-06-06T18:50:16","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T18:50:16","slug":"223-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/223-2\/","title":{"rendered":"New app detects pancreatic cancer in the early stages"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pinar Uysal-Onganer<\/a>, University of Westminster<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly cancers. It has a five-year survival of just 3%<\/a>, and a ten-year survival of less than 1%<\/a>. The prime reason for these depressing figures is that the disease is very difficult to detect in the early stages. By the time it is detected, it is often incurable. But help may be at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed an app called BiliScreen that can detect pancreatic cancer at the early stages. A build-up of bilirubin \u2013 which causes the eyes and skin to yellow \u2013 is one of the early indicators of the disease. The app calculates the amount of bilirubin in the whites of a person\u2019s eyes. The user takes a selfie and a machine-learning algorithm \u2013 a type of artificial intelligence \u2013 performs the diagnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bilirubin is produced when the liver breaks down old red blood cells. Jaundice, the yellow discoloration of the skin and sclera (the white part of the eyes), results from an excess of this substance. This discolouration is only visible when jaundice is quite severe. However, BiliScreen produces an estimate of a person\u2019s bilirubin level even at levels too low to be detected by the naked eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the moment, the user of the app needs to use a special box (similar to a VR headset) to block out light from other sources, but the makers of the app hope that future versions won\u2019t need this additional equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A clinical study<\/a> of BiliScreen, involving 70 participants, found that the app has a high sensitivity (90%). This is the ability of a test to correctly identify people with a disease. In this case, 90% of the people with abnormally elevated bilirubin levels were correctly identified. The app also had high specificity, meaning there were few \u201cfalse positives\u201d \u2013 healthy people wrongly identified as having a disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BiliScreen can also be used to detect other reasons for jaundice, such as hepatitis<\/a> and Gilbert\u2019s syndrome<\/a>, a common, harmless liver condition in which the liver doesn\u2019t properly process bilirubin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An earlier version of the app \u2013 called BiliCam<\/a> \u2013 was used to detect jaundice in newborns by taking snapshots of their skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not a doctor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

BiliScreen joins a growing list of apps used for diagnosis, including other cancers. For example, there are a number of apps that screen for skin cancer. Some of these apps use fractal geometry to assess the shape of moles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A scientific review of these melanoma-detecting apps<\/a> found that some of them have high sensitivity and specificity (73% and 83% respectively). However, the study found that a diagnosis given by a dermatologist and pathologist, if a biopsy is needed, gives a higher sensitivity and specificity \u2013 88% and 97% respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although diagnostic apps will never take the place of doctors, they can act as useful early detectors of disease. And, in the case of BiliScreen, they are more convenient and less invasive than the usual test for jaundice, which involves a trip to the doctor and a blood draw. But whether people will be disciplined enough to regularly use a growing range of apps to screen for diseases, when they\u2019re feeling in the peak of health, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pinar Uysal-Onganer<\/a>, Lecturer in Molecular Biology, University of Westminster<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pinar Uysal-Onganer, University of Westminster Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly cancers. It has a five-year survival of just 3%, and a ten-year survival of less than 1%. The prime reason for these depressing figures is that the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,18],"tags":[69,27,37,26,71,32,66,70,29,72,30,33,31],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology-biomedical-sciences","category-life-sciences","tag-biology-and-biomedical-sciences","tag-college-of-liberal-arts-and-sciences","tag-higher-education","tag-las","tag-life-sciences","tag-london","tag-research","tag-school-of-life-sciences","tag-science","tag-study-in-london","tag-university","tag-university-of-westminster","tag-westminster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/difference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}