May 5, 2011 1.17 pm This story is over 153 months old

Lincoln makes world’s biggest chip for cancer diagnosis

Dynamite: The university has created the world’s biggest chip, aimed to help with imaging for cancer sufferers.

University of Lincoln scientists have created the world’s biggest microchip for medical engineering.

The chip, which is 12.8 cm squared, will be used for cancer diagnosis in early stages and to see the impact of radiotherapy treatment on tumours.

The chip has been named DynAMITe, and is 200 times larger than processing chips in current PCs and laptops. It can also survive years of radiation exposure.

Professor of Image Engineering at Lincoln Prof Allinson said: “DynAMITe was designed for medical imaging, in particular mammography and radiotherapy, so the individual pixels are much larger than those found in consumer digital cameras or mobile phones.

“As it will withstand exposure to very high levels of x-ray and other radiation, it will operate for many years in the adverse environment of cancer diagnosis and treatment instruments; and represents a major advance over the existing technology of amorphous Silicon panels.”

The project was funded by a grant from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Also involved were medical physicists at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and The Royal Marsden Hospital.

ICR Professor Phil Evans said: “Our clinical work has given us an insight into areas in which the existing technology falls short, and we were very pleased the consortium was able to design a microchip that met our exact specifications for medical imaging.

“We are looking forward to investigating all the potential uses for this chip in cancer research and treatment.”

Source: University of Lincoln