Skin cancer

A non-invasive technique to detect skin cancer using the elastic scattering spectroscopy is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Three experiments were conducted. The first experiment was done to calibrate the optical probe. The results portray a relationship between wavelength and Refractive Index (RI) which proves that the probe is sensitive to changes in RI. Understanding that the prevalence of skin cancer differs for different skin types, the second experiment was done to find out if various skin or tumour colour results in different absorptions. Hence, the probe is tested on a range of colours to test for its sensitivity. However, the results were not promising as the methodology used might not pick up the signal well due to low variation in RI. The last experiment, which is the highlight of this report, is done by testing on a normal pig skin and a dead human skin with cancer cells. Making a comparison between the two, there is an irregular reflection scatter for the skin sample with cancer cells. The waveform obtained was not as define as those from the normal pig skin where a define trend was observed. At wavelengths 520 to 600nm, there is a significant drop in absorption. Hence, the absorption spectrum differs between the normal and skin with cancer cells. Also, it has been affirmed that using wavelengths at visible light spectrum of 420 to 1020nm is the most ideal to observe any changes in absorption. At near-infrared wavelengths, both the normal and skin with cancer cells show no significant change.Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering