Early Detection of Oral Cancer

This project is the pioneering attempt to develop non-invasive, non-ionizing, radiation hazard free, point-of-care computer aided diagnostic framework for oral cancer detection using Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging (DITI).

Oral cancer is the most common cancer in India where approximately 14 people die /hour. Patients are unable to avail diagnosis due to scarcity of state-of-the-art infrastructure and oral-pathologist. Patients are reluctant to go for invasive biopsy. All these along with absence of screening facility pose hindrance to early diagnosis. Due to abnormal metabolic activities in carcinogenic facial regions, heat signatures of patients are different from that of normal subjects. Asymmetry of temperature distribution was compared between facial regions (opposite sides of frontal image and between left and right profile images ) for patients and normal subjects. The analysis suggested that patients manifest greater asymmetry compared to normal subjects. This project requires only a one time investment of a long infrared thermal camera, image processing and machine learning software and a laptop/workstation. Thus, there is minimal resource requirement. Also, Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging (DITI) has no recurring or maintenance cost. The image acquisition protocol is so simple that even a high school student can acquire the images.It provides on-spot oral-cancer screening facility and is portable.Thus, screening camps can be organised even in remote villages with minimal infrastructure.As DITI has no recurring cost, it can be scaled up to cater the huge population of developing countries like India.

Highlights:

1. Mar. 2017: Received Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award under MLM-Frugal Innovation (BIRAC-GYTI) (15 Indian students selected combined from U.G, P.G and Doctoral level)
2. Sep. 2015: Received Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship (9 Indian students selected combined from U.G, P.G and Doctoral level)

Publications:

1. Manashi Chakraborty, Rahul Das Gupta, Sudipta Mukhopadhyay, Nishat Anjum, Santanu Patsa, Jay Gopal Ray “An introductory analysis of digital infrared thermal imaging guided oral cancer detection using multiresolution rotation invariant texture features”, SPIE Medical Imaging, Orlando, Florida, USA, 11 Feb-16 Feb, 2017
2. Manashi Chakraborty, Suraj Kiran Raman, Sudipta Mukhopadhyay, Santanu Patsa, Nishat Anjum, Jay Gopal Ray “High precision automated face localization in thermal images: Oral cancer dataset as test case”, SPIE Medical Imaging, Orlando, Florida, USA, 11 Feb- 16 Feb, 2017
3. Manashi Chakraborty, Sudipta Mukhopadhyay, Avijit Dasgupta, Santanu Patsa, Nishat Anjum, Jay Gopal Ray “A new approach of oral cancer detection using bilateral texture features in digital infrared thermal images”,2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Orlando, Florida, USA, 16 Aug-20 Aug, 2016
4. Manashi Chakraborty, Sudipta Mukhopadhyay, Avijit Dasgupta, Swapna Banerjee, Sourav Mukhopadhyay, Santanu Patsa, Jay Gopal Ray “A New Paradigm of oral Cancer Detection using Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging”,SPIE Medical imaging, San Diego, California, USA, 27 Feb-3 March, 2016

Patents:

1. Manashi Chakraborty, Ankit Tiwari, Abhishek Prajapati, Sudipta Mukhopadhyay, "Fully automated system for facial keypoint detection in infrared images enabling ROI extraction for oral cancer detection using digital infrared thermal imaging ", provisional patent application number no. TEMP/E- 1/13399/2018-KOL dated 05-Apr-2018