Researchers are investigating whether being right handed is due to genetics or other factors.

Doing this can speed an accurate diagnosis and treatment to generate better patient outcomes. Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States alone; 95% of all patients diagnosed with the disease will die from it, more than half within six months of diagnosis.

"Until better treatment approaches can be developed, the only opportunity to change disease-associated mortality in pancreatic cancer patients is earlier diagnosis,” explained Mary-Ann Mycek, associate professor and associate chair of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, USA), department of biomedical engineering. "Current diagnostic methods have not been able to provide accurate diagnoses in early stages of the disease.”

The Michigan team's goal is to develop an optical technique to detect pancreatic cancer in patients at early stages--a development that could greatly improve the chances of patient survival by meeting the critical, unmet need of accurately differentiating malignant masses from benign pancreatitis. Such improved diagnostic accuracy could also appropriately triage patients, thereby preventing those without cancer from having unnecessary surgery.

To accomplish this, investigators used a multimodal optical spectroscopy approach based on observing reflectance and fluorescence properties of pancreatic tissue samples. Spectral analysis showed significant differences between normal, pancreatitis (inflammation), and cancerous tissues, thus suggesting noninvasive diagnostic possibilities for distinguishing among disease states.

The theory behind optically based diagnostics is this: in the body, the presence of disease alters tissue properties, such as local biochemistry and structure. Optically based disease diagnostic techniques can probe microscopic tissue alterations for signatures of disease, thereby leading to noninvasive diagnostics in living patients. Once detected optically, such diseased tissue may be treated. Because optical techniques do not require the removal of tissue, they could represent an advance in patient care over the invasive practice of tissue biopsy.

The study's findings were presented at Frontiers in Optics 2008 (FiO), the 92nd annual meeting of the Optical Society (OSA), which was held October 19-23, 2008, in Rochester, NY, USA.

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