Skin Cancer Screening Tool Can Help Reduce ‘Worry Time’

Skin Cancer Screening Tool Can Help Reduce ‘Worry Time’

These days, a cancer diagnosis—while upsetting and worrisome—is often no longer a death sentence. According to a recent joint study from Loyola University in Chicago and Harvard Medical School, regular physical activity in cancer patients could cut the risk of death nearly in half. However, the best way to fight cancer will always be early detection followed by aggressive medical treatment.

When it comes to skin, rather than wait for one’s annual check-up, it’s important to self-examine and notice if there are changes. Self-screening for potential skin cancer is easy– just pay attention to skin, particularly moles, birthmarks or freckles. If any of these change size, color or shape, or pop up out of the blue, one should take note and tell a dermatologist. It could be nothing, but better safe than sorry.

Melanomas in particular can metastasize if left unchecked. Caliber Imaging & Diagnostics (I.D.) is one company that knows the importance of screening for skin cancer, and is doing something to help. Based in Boston and Rochester, Caliber I.D. designs, develops and markets innovative imaging technology for examining skin tissue at the cellular level.

Caliber has created confocal microscopy devices called VivaScope®. This breakthrough technological advance can take pictures of an entire lesion layer by layer, and can help physicians to diagnose most skin diseases and disorders. Since there is no cutting involved, there is also no possibility of infection or scarring. Obtaining an image takes just a few minutes so the doctor can make a determination at the bedside, or the image can be transferred within minutes through the company’s VivaNet® system, so that a pathologist can diagnose it remotely. This significantly reduces the “worry time” associated with biopsies.

L. Michael Hone, CEO of Caliber I.D., says, “VivaScope is designed to help physicians improve the quality of care for patients who want medical advice about their skin without the disadvantages presented by traditional biopsy.”