Inexpensive, Portable Diagnostic Tools for Oral Diseases

Eighty percent of the Indian population has no access to regular dental care or early screenings for a host of oral diseases (oral cancer, dental caries, periodontal diseases etc.). Additionally, many systemic diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, and AIDS can directly or indirectly compromise oral tissues. In particular, due to wide-spread tobacco chewing, India accounts for one third of the global deaths reported to oral cancers, with over 80,000 reported new cases in spite of limited screening availability.

Oral cancer screenings are currently performed by a visual inspection of the mouth and gums by an expert using bulky machines. Our approach involves non-invasive portable oral imaging, to detect and quantify oral disease manifestations without specialized training. At 1/10,000th the cost of methods in use today, we propose to de-couple the pipeline of care by utilizing novel imaging/illumination techniques, performing subsurface imaging of both soft and hard tissue, followed by computational analysis to identify and transmit vital information about oral well-being.

Remote diagnosis for rural patients will become a true possibility through telemedicine centers. Screening in rural areas will help hospitals identify patients at early stages, effectively increasing and evaluating the influx of symptomatic patients, thereby establishing India’s first widespread early detection system for oral cancers.