AIMBE
A three-second optical scan could help detect endometrial cancer without a painful biopsy.
Endometrial cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer, with more than 69,000 cases diagnosed in the U.S. in 2025 and increasing up to 3% annually. Diagnosis requires an often painful and invasive biopsy that carries a risk of false negatives. A multidisciplinary research team at Washington University in St. Louis and Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine, is looking to a fast, safe and noninvasive imaging method combined with machine learning for an accurate detection and diagnosis of precancerous lesions and early cancers.
The team, led by Quing Zhu, PhD, the Edwin H. Murty Professor of Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, conducted an initial investigation using optical coherence tomography (OCT), which detects differences in how tissue reflects light and acquires high-resolution 3D images with a depth of up to 1 to 2 millimeters… Continue reading.
