New slender hand-held pocket colposcope will make cervical cancer screening comfortable and accessible for more women.

courtesy:Duke University 

Uncomfortable speculums and high cost colposcopes can soon be replaced by a simple hand-held device for cervical cancer screening say researchers at Duke University.

Invasive cervical cancer (ICC) affects the lives of 500,000 women worldwide each year, and results in more than 270,000 deaths.Many deaths can be prevented by addressing the barriers to cervical cancer screening which also includes travel distance to the provider, comfort during the procedure  and  adequate assessment of risk.

The “pocket colposcope” is a slender wand that can connect to many devices, including laptops or cell phones. It can be used by woman for self-screening in low resource settings, including some areas in US.

The paper was published on May 31 in the Journal Plos One.

“The mortality rate of cervical cancer should absolutely be zero percent because we have all the tools to see and treat it,” said Nimmi Ramanujam, the Robert W. Carr, Jr., Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke. “But it isn’t. That is in part because women do not receive screening or do not follow up on a positive screening to have colposcopy performed at a referral clinic. We need to bring colposcopy to women so that we can reduce this complicated string of actions into a single touch point.”

courtesy: Plos One 

The device has a slender, tubular body just like a tampon with a funnel-like curved tip measuring approximately 2.5 cm in diameter. The inserter has a side channel which a 2 megapixel (MP) mini camera with LED illumination to enable image capture.

The device also includes a channel through which contrast agents used for the cervical cancer screening procedure can be applied. The researchers recruited a group of volunteers to try the new device and  92.3%  said that they would prefer it over a traditional speculum. 80% women got good image and the rest said that they can do it with a better practice.

Dr. Ramanujam and Asiedu, a graduate student in Duke’s Global Women’s Health Technologies Center are working on clinical trials to compare it with traditional speculum and coloscopes.

Asiedu is also working to teach the computer to spot precancerous and cancerous lesions. This involves machine learning so that the screening can be performed by midwives, community health workers and even the women themselves.