ARPHA Preprints, doi: 10.3897/arphapreprints.e89458
A low-cost Point-of-Care Diagnostic for Premature Oral Cancer Screening
expand article infoRitesh Bhirud
‡ Unaffiliated, Arlington, United States of America
Open Access
Abstract

Oral cancer is a cancerous growth in the oral cavity. More than 90% of all oral cancers are squamous cell carcinoma. Oral squamous cell carcinoma has the highest mortality ratio compared to other carcinomas. The high mortality rate is mainly due to detection of the cancer in an advanced stage on account of its initial asymptomatic nature. In addition, the methods currently in place for oral cancer detection involve expensive complex laboratory procedures and usually longer wait times for patients leading to late diagnosis. Further, the treatments for advanced staged cancers are costly and less effective in terms of the post-treatment survival rates. Thus, society needs an easy-to-use tool for assessing oral cancers at an early stage. The aim of the project is to develop an easily accessible point-of-care kit which will assist in early detection of oral cancer at a low cost. The kit will consist of a complete home-based test which could be easily operated by vulnerable individuals. The test will be based on the patient’s salivary sample and to obtain an oral cancer risk-analysis with detailed statistics on an app. Furthermore, the app will also feature a digital pathology test for an analysis of potential malignancies based on image(s) of the oral cavity. The chemical aspect of the tool will be based on a thermal reaction of formulated Thiobarbituric Acid reagent along with a spectroscopy sensor. The app will be connected to the sensor via Bluetooth and the image screening will be based on deep learning using deep convolutional neural network. 

Keywords
oral cancer, early detection, at home testing, deep learning