Thanks to a new skin cancer screening technology developed by Latvian researchers, clinicians across the EU may soon have access to a portable device that can detect melanoma without a biopsy.
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00:03 When we started the project, we understood
00:08 that there is a large flow of patients that
00:11 wish to check their small moles, which are obviously OK.
00:14 And they go to dermatologists, so the long lines appear.
00:18 And we defined that it would be really nice to get this device
00:20 to the general practitioner.
00:22 And so this normal moles would not go to the dermatologist,
00:26 but the abnormal will really go and get this fast track
00:30 to the dermatologist.
00:31 Definitely, it will be a reduction of costs,
00:33 because you can really do it in a 30-second test.
00:36 And you see that you don't need to actually take
00:39 the dermatologist's time.
00:40 And if you detect it early enough,
00:41 you don't need to treat the patient.
00:43 So that's obviously cost-effective.
00:46 Our team, since we're a technical university,
00:49 so we can bring together the hardware, the programming
00:52 part, the AI part, to bring it from the idea
00:55 to the real product.
00:56 Our colleagues from Hungary, they work with the device.
00:59 And they study different properties of the skin,
01:02 because it's not just for melanoma.
01:03 You can study different parameters.
01:06 You can see what's inside the skin.
01:08 And then they go later on to develop new classification
01:12 and diagnostic algorithms.
01:15 The biggest part is certification,
01:17 because you cannot go for the real market
01:19 without a medical certificate.
01:21 And we hope that in one or two years,
01:24 we will get the certificate and we'll be ready to build
01:27 a commercial product.
01:27 This is the first medical project I started with.
01:30 I'm really excited to bring it for such a long way.
01:33 And now we're doing different other medical projects
01:36 with other clinics as well.
01:37 And of course, it would be really nice
01:39 to bring it to people and to bring
01:41 some real help for people.
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01:46 (dramatic music)