30 % of adults in Europe have a thyroid nodule. Thyroid cancer occurs in 5-15 % of thyroid nodules. Thyroid cancer is a major and growing health challenge.
Chances of survival and full recovery to a great extent depends on an early and fast diagnosis and an effective treatment. To exclude thyroid cancer when screening thyroid nodules, ultrasound followed by fine needle aspiration biopsy of suspicious nodules is done. In thyroid cancer, the sensitivity and specificity of this process are limited. This leads to a large number of non-diagnostic and false positive results and as a consequence to a big number of unnecessary surgery.
LUCA device has been developed. It combines photonics and ultrasound and is capable of analyzing accurately thyroid nodules for thyroid cancer.