“World’s fastest camera” distinguishes and isolates rogue cancer cells

UCLA engineers have developed a new optical microscope equipped with the world’s fastest camera. This advancement could lead to much earlier detection of cancer and other diseases. For example, because there are only a handful of circulating cancer tumor cells among a billion healthy cells, they are very hard to detect. However, they are precursors to metastasis, making their detection crucial to preventing the spread of most cancers. "To catch these elusive cells, the camera must be able to capture and digitally process millions of images continuously at a very high frame rate," said Bahram Jalali, who holds the Northrop Grumman Endowed Opto-Electronic Chair in Electrical Engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. The new technology utilizes advanced microfluidics and real-time image processing to classify cells in blood samples. It boasts a throughput that is approximately 100 times higher than conventional image-based blood analyzers.