Science Questions

Wasn’t there something about shining light on skin that was a method of detecting cancers?

Chris - Yes, that’s absolutely true. People have found that there’s a technique that’s called Raman spectroscopy. When you shine light at something the light gets bombarded or ricocheted about like bullets bouncing around a room when it passes through different substances. Depending upon the structures it’s passing through you get a different fingerprint scatter pattern. We know what normal skin does. If you shine light into skin which has got a malignant melanoma on it you get a different scatter pattern entirely. Scientists are investigating this as a very sensitive diagnostic technique. You may be able to use it to pinpoint a lesion which you might think I’m not suspicious enough to want to biopsy it but I might be suspicious enough to wave one of these wands at it and it would say, yes that’s got a scatter pattern that says it’s got a lot of cells which are in an abnormal configuration under the skin. It could be cancer, it’s worth doing a biopsy.

October 2008