Health: Advancing early-stage cancer diagnosis thanks to AI

Creating an innovative and low-cost medical device for increasingly precocious, accurate and rapid diagnosis of tumors, through a simple blood or urine analysis: this is the objective of the project ADVISER, funded by Regione Lazio with approximately 400 thousand euro, and coordinated by the computer engineering company Kell srl in collaboration with ENEA, the ARES Consortium of Rome and the National Institute of Biostructures and Biosystems.

"The new device will be technologically advanced, but easy to use for both doctors and laboratory technicians. It will have an intelligent IT system analyzing and interpreting biological data in a fully automated way while allowing 'self-learning' to perform increasingly precocious cancer diagnoses”, Cesare Aragno, Kell's technical director and project coordinator of ADVISER ( Automatic DeVice and Integrated System for the Smart Detection of tumouRs), explained.

The main beneficiaries of this device will be the oncology facilities of large hospitals and major clinics, but also other public and private diagnostic centers and analysis laboratories that, thanks to this hi-tech device, will have to perform 'just' simple tests on biological samples of patients.

"For this device we have chosen a diagnostic technique with a high sensitivity and quick response that will enable us to build a prototype capable of providing increasingly accurate and above all rapid diagnosis, both as regards analysis time and early diagnosis of the disease, as compared with the time-consuming techniques currently used ", Antonella Lai, ENEA researcher at the Diagnostic and Metrology Laboratory and scientific coordinator of the project, explained.

The project ADVISER uses Raman spectroscopy, on which ENEA will focus its activities, thanks to the experience gained in the EU project RAMBO[1] aimed at detecting potentially dangerous microorganisms in the air. Raman spectroscopy consists in sending to the sample to be analyzed a laser light with a spectrum ranging from ultraviolet to infrared; subsequently, the light diffused or reflected by its own molecules is collected and analyzed to identify the composition of the sample itself. "We will study this reflected light, the so-called electromagnetic spectra, to detect and identify the tumor bio-markers of interest", the ENEA researcher concluded.

This diagnostic technique allows to probe areas smaller than 1 micron - the diameter of a hair is about 70 microns - and this is the reason why it’s used in many fields, from the biomedical one for the differentiation between healthy and diseased tissue, to the pharmacological and biochemical ones for the study of the life cycle of the cell, to the quality of agro-food, up to the cultural heritage for the analysis of pictorial pigments.

In addition to the funds from Regione Lazio, the project ADVISER received the 'Seal of Excellence' as part of the H2020 announcement 'SME: Accelerating market introduction of ICT solutions for Health, Well-Being and Aging”, a quality certificate awarded by the European Commission.

For more information please contact:

Antonella Lai, ENEA - "Diagnostics and Metrology Laboratory", antonia.lai@enea.it

[1] Rapid Air-particle Monitoring against BiOlogical threats