PUNE: There has been almost 18 per cent rise in efficiency in diagnosis of cancer by using the Digital Image Processing technique for analysing cancerous cells provided by Ruby Hall Clinic, technical institute Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology (VIIT), Pune said.

VIIT has established a Centre for Excellence in Research and Development (CERD) on its campus. It has a special advanced visual computing laboratory, where visual computing of cancer samples sent by Ruby Hall clinic is analysed using Digital Image Processing technology.

“We have Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ruby Hall Clinic to do analysis of real data, with focus on cancerous cells. We have the MoU since last two years, and in these years we have seen accuracy in desired results increased by 15-18 per cent,” Dean, Research and Development, and professor, Computer Engineering Department, VIIT, Prof A S Abhyankar said. He was speaking on the sidelines of a five-day seminar on Digital Image Processing technology, which started at the Army Institute of Technology (AIT) on Monday.

“Under the project, the high-end imaging machinery located in the lab takes high resolution pictures of cancerous cell samples sent by the Ruby Hall. These machines can generate 50,000 high resolution digital images of cell structures in eight hours. However, it is not practical to analyse all those images manually. We have to go for automated ways for analysis like mathematical algorithms,” Abhyankar said.

The results obtained are then matched with the diagnosis of the pathologists of the hospital to check for accuracy. “Since we are not experts in medical field, we take the opinion of the radiologists and pathologists regarding the results obtained. This becomes baseline for our tests,” he said.

Citing an example, he said that a particular case was diagnosed with Type 2 cancer, with 60 per cent cells affected by cancer.

Using this technique, it was found that the patient had 73.2 per cent cancer affected cells, which meant Type-3 (advanced) line of treatment should be given.

ON RIGHT TRACK

Oncopathologist at Ruby Hall, Dr Swapnil Karnik said that it was still very early to put a figure to the rate of success. “However, the process is on the right track and initial results are positive,” he said.