Paragraph generally describing Cervix research.
Overview of Cervical Pre-Cancer Imaging
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a screen-and-treat approach for cervical precursor lesions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Currently, visual inspection is used for screening, followed by ablation if a lesion is identified. There are significant challenges with current approaches to screen-and-treat strategies for cervical cancer and the lack of experts in the field makes diagnosis challenging.
Our team is working to create a new strategy for wide scale cervical cancer surveillance in LMICs by bringing low-cost, high quality interventions into primary care settings, enabling providers to implement an effective screen-and-treat model that is on par with care in high-resource settings. This has led to the development of the Pocket colposcope, which can be inserted into the vaginal canal to provide a close-up view of the cervix at the price point of a digital camera. The Pocket Colposcope brings the capabilities of specialists to the primary care setting and doubles as both a screening and as a diagnostic colposcope. A smart phone attached to the Pocket colposcope provides navigation with live video and can capture images of the cervix. When the high-quality images obtained with the Pocket colposcope are coupled with machine learning algorithms, expert colposcopy can be implemented at the point-of-care setting, enabling community health providers in the front lines to be able to make effective decisions that maximize value and minimize cost. To overcome discomforts associated with the traditional speculum, we have also developed a very simple mechanical inserter without any moving parts that can be used to position the cervix for imaging and diagnosis.