A tiny magnetic robot which can take 3D scans from deep within the body, that could revolutionise early cancer detection, has been developed by researchers at the University of Leeds.
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00:00Colorectal cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death worldwide.
00:06And the traditional method of screening for this cancer is a device called the colonoscope.
00:12The key to surviving this cancer is detecting it early.
00:16And so this is exactly what the colonoscope tries to do.
00:19Now this device was designed in the 1950s.
00:21And for it to get around bends, you actually need to push the tissue and stretch the tissue
00:28that it could be a bit uncomfortable for the patient.
00:31But also it means that it is actually quite a difficult task to master.
00:36Professor Pietro Valdastri and his lab, the STOM Lab, came up with a new concept to use
00:40a robot and magnets to perform this procedure.
00:44And so this is the robot that you can see here.
00:48And what we have is an external permanent magnet on a robot that allows us to actually move
00:54a smaller magnet inside the body.
00:58It removes the stretching of the tissue, which makes it much more comfortable for the patient.
01:02But it also allows the clinician to use a simple joystick to maneuver the robotic device.
01:10We've actually been able to have some clinical trials on this device showing that patients
01:15indeed do not feel any pain or discomfort.
01:19Usually with the traditional colonoscope, you have to take physical tissue samples and send
01:24it to the lab to get tested.
01:27What we wanted to do is to allow that process to occur in one single procedure in the body,
01:33in real time.
01:34To do this, we actually had to overcome a very interesting limitation in magnetic manipulation,
01:41which is that you can't actually roll magnets about the axis.
01:45You're able to tilt them this way.
01:47You're able to tilt them this way.
01:49But if you rotate a magnet this way, the second magnet doesn't move because you aren't creating
01:55any misalignment.
01:56And that's how magnets work.
01:59And so what we had to do was think a bit deeper.
02:02And that's where the Oloid shape came in.
02:04This shape essentially couples some of the motions that we have with magnetic manipulation to the
02:13one that we don't.
02:15And we integrated a high-resolution ultrasound probe into it, which allowed us to actually
02:21visualize the tissue below what you can see with a camera.
02:26And so this allowed us to mimic what you would get if you took a physical biopsy and sent it
02:31to the lab.
02:32There is a company that is working to commercialize this device, and they are looking to get FDA
02:38approval by the end of the year.
02:40So we hope to see it in the clinics very soon.
02:43And I've been working on this project personally for almost four years now, and I think it's really
02:49exciting now to see the sort of combination of those four years in something that has been
02:55published and that the public can now see and understand.