UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, CALIFORNIA, USA. A newly developed high speed camera called STEAM (serial time-encoded amplified microscopy) is currently being utilized to detect cancer cells in the blood stream. So far, it is considered as the fastest and the most sensitive camera in the whole world.

It has always been difficult to detect circulating tumor cells in the blood stream because they move too fast. Also, the blood stream has several types of cells in it which makes it the perfect hiding place for circulating tumor cells. Tumor cells come from cancerous tumors that form inside the body. The tumor cells break away from the source and gets lost in the bloodstream which makes it more difficult to control.

The group of engineers at UCLA who developed STEAM is led by Bahram Jalali and Dino Di Carlo. By using a super-fast microscopic camera, the researchers in the UCLA are able to capture images at 36.7 million frames per second which is really fast. STEAM uses extremely short laser pulses which translate to one billionth of one second long to capture blood cell images. It is equivalent to a shutter speed of only 27 picoseconds, or 27 trillionths of a second which is extremely fast.

With this technology, early detection for cancer cells become even faster and will definitely increase the accuracy. At the same time, patients can expect a painless and non-invasive diagnostic. That means there will be zero recovery time for the patient and more tests can be conducted at a certain point in time without having anyone to wait for the results.