Spanish engineer Judit Giró Benet has won the 2020 international James Dyson Award for her innovative design, The Blue Box, which enables women to test themselves for breast cancer at home using a urine sample.
The Blue Box – which has not yet been painted blue as it is currently in the prototype phase – is an at-home, biomedical breast cancer testing device that uses a urine sample and an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to detect early signs of the disease. Benet designed the kit with the aim of offering women a more accessible and less invasive way of getting tested for breast cancer, which typically requires them to attend hospitals or medical facilities for a mammogram.
This procedure can be painful and often costly. Due to this, Benet explains that an estimated 40% of women skip their screening, resulting in one in three cases being detected late. This is apart from the fact that a lot of women do not carry out self-checks at home, either because they do not know how to do it, or because they keep putting it off. More recently, the coronavirus pandemic has led to nearly one million women missing their breast screening, according to charity Breast Cancer Now.
Inspired by Benet’s mother, who was previously diagnosed with breast cancer, The Blue Box test could be used at home as a non-invasive, pain-free, low-cost alternative to hospital mammograms. The device’s technology is based on Blat, a dog that was able to detect lung cancer by smelling its owner’s breath. Benet aimed to make her own “electronic nose” by replicating the dog’s sensory system onto an Arduino microprocessor and a series of sensors. It uses the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method to analyse and identify different substances within different urine samples in order to learn about the odour of cancer. The same odour is then processed with Arduino – an open-source computing platform that is able to read inputs and turn it into an output – and four metal oxide sensors. The results are sent to the Cloud, or the internet, where an AI-based algorithm reacts to specific metabolites in the urine, providing the user with a fast diagnosis. The device is linked to a smartphone app that communicates the results to the user and puts them in touch with a medical professional if the sample tests positive.
“The Blue Box has the potential to make cancer screening a part of daily life,” said Benet. “It can help to change the way society fights breast cancer to ensure that more women can avoid an advanced diagnosis.” Of her award, which is the competition’s top prize, she says, “The prize money will allow me to patent more extensively and expedite research and software development I am doing at the University of California Irvine. But, most of all, hearing that [James Dyson] believes in my idea has given me the confidence I need at this vital point.”
The engineer is currently undergoing patent discussions for The Blue Box and will spend the next few years working on the final stages of prototyping and data analytics software at the University of California Irvine, in preparation for human studies and clinical trials.
Source: Dezeen