Some diseases do not exhibit recognizable symptoms until they are well advanced. Often the earlier the disease is detected the better the benefits of treatment.
One of the goals of researchers working at the nanoscale is to develop tools that will enable doctors to detect life threatening diseases before they overwhelm the body. For example, doctors would like to be able to diagnose breast cancer when the tumor mass is 100-1000 cells. Right now with techniques like mammography, a tumor mass needs to be more than a million cells before an accurate clinical diagnosis can be made. Sensors based upon nanoscale materials have the potential to be millions of times more sensitive than their macro scale counterparts. They could also be designed to detect hundreds or even thousands of diseases at the same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment