Waterloo Professor Looks to Technology to Help Treat Tuberculosis

Some say more pictures are taken everyday in today’s world than in the first 100 years of photography’s invention. That’s a lot. Some also say that over 1,000 photos are uploaded to Facebook every second – that’s over 30 billion photos uploaded to just one social networking site every year. These numbers show how much the digitizing of a once analog format has propelled its usage astronomically. Taking photographs has never been so easy, so instant, and also, so cheap.
But that’s not the purpose of the article. The above is to demonstrate what can happen with technological breakthroughs. In the previous case, we have millions of people sharing more stories through images to their friends and families around the world, but technological breakthroughs can happen anywhere in society, and one place where a difference can really be made is in medical imaging.
Most people have had an X-ray at some point in their life, whether dental or to diagnose another medical condition. In the analog world, large film sheets specially coated with phosphors would be used as a radiation sensitive medium to produce X-ray images. Today, in the digital world, much like the typical visible light digital image, silicon is used to replace film as a medium. It’s not an absolutely new technology, but one that could be used to diagnose and treat illnesses around the world easily, instantly, and cheaply. One Waterloo faculty member, Associate Professor Karim S. Karim of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering wants to do just that.
Utilizing X-Ray pixel technology developed at the University of Waterloo, Karim sees a world where cheaper X-Ray images are used in the diagnosis of some of the more common illnesses in the third world, and one example is tuberculosis (TB). According to the World Health Organization, TB is a contagious lung disease which is easily spread through the air by infected persons. The WHO estimates over one-third of the world’s population is infected with the disease and over 1 million people die every year worldwide due to the illness. TB is very treatable with antibiotics, but it first must be diagnosed and as mentioned, can be diagnosed with the help of a digital X-ray imager. However, Karim says the high cost of digital X-ray imagers is preventing widespread use of this diagnosing method. As digital X-Ray images are a fairly new venture in the world of Medicine and are focused on hospitals which there are relatively few in the world, individual imagers can be very expensive due to the technology involved and low demand.
Karim’s vision is to see the creation of tuberculosis clinics in countries where the disease is very proliferate. Instead of having Doctors in hospitals diagnosing the medical condition, many tuberculosis clinics would be set up and would use the X-Ray imagers to easily diagnose patients. As Karim puts it, “If I want an oil change, I could take my car to the dealer, book 3 days in advance and get essentially the same thing at Mr. Lube which can be done in 15 minutes.” Doctors are very expensive and can lead to inefficiencies in the system when their time is taken up diagnosing easily detectable infections such a TB. By having trained staff inside of a small clinic, the cost of detection can be reduced allowing a greater throughput for treatment. Karim also mentioned how lower numbers of hospitals in heavily populated countries would make it impossible to screen and treat everyone for TB, thus the small clinics are necessary. Having small, cheap clinics is a great idea, but it also requires the right technology.
The technology behind the device is very simple. Take amorphous silicon and place it together with a TFT panel (similar to one inside of a computer monitor), and a low cost, large area optical imager. As this panel would be targeted towards Asia and the Middle East, cost savings can be found in reducing the total image area of the device. Typically, each column of pixels would get their charge own amplifier to read out the sensor; however, by using simple multiplexers in tandem with pre-amps on each pixel, the number of charge amplifiers can be reduced to save even more money. With high numbers of clinics being installed, a high volume of individual images would be present. The high volume would allow manufacturers to create the devices at a substantially lower cost that Karim is targeting at $1000. Although the focus of the imager would be TB, it is also possible to detect and treat other medical conditions such as pneumonia and broken bones. As Karim put it, “You’ve basically opened up low-cost X-ray for the developing world.”
Karim is looking to propel his idea forward and has entered his proposal into a competition held by Grand Challenges Canada. The whole idea behind grand challenges is based on a book called “The Grandest Challenge – Taking Life-saving Science from Lab to Village” by authors Dr. Abdallah Daar and Dr. Peter Singer. The winning proposal is set to gain $100,000 to help fund the development and implementation of the idea. Anyone can view Karim’s proposal video online and vote to support the idea. To check out the TB_View 1000 proposal visit: http://bit.ly/otNhWg