Professor Abraham Katzir using his innovation on a patient.
For the first time, melanoma can be diagnosed automatically in real-time. An innovative optical technology that can distinguish between different types of cancer melanoma, which is considered extremely deadly – has been developed in the laboratory of Professor Abraham Katzir, from the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences at Tel Aviv University. The diagnosis is rapid, non-invasive, and causes no pain to the patient. This technology was tried successfully on about one hundred patients in a major hospital in Israel. The findings were published in the Journal Medical Physics (
Professor Katzir says that in the case of melanoma, immediate diagnosis can save lives. He goes on to explain that when a suspicious lesion is found on the skin, during a routine examination, it is removed in a minor surgical procedure and sent to a laboratory for testing. A pathologist diagnoses the lesion and determines whether it