Teen partners with AC MakerSpace to build cancer detection prototype
Posted on Friday, August 14th, 2020
He’s only 14, but Aaryan Harshith is already changing the world.
Over the past year, the Sudbury teen has partnered with Algonquin College’s MakerSpace to create what he refers to an AI-Powered Cancer Detection Device. The innovative instrument finds cancer cells in the body without invasive surgery.
As Aaryan puts it: “Essentially, it’s the first hand-held, real-time way for surgeons to streamline the operating process.”
Aaryan talked with Matthew Jerabek, Impact Coordinator in the College Applied Research, Innovation & Entrepreneurship section, about his invention. Explaining its purpose and why at such a young age he decided to help cancer patients, he reveals an awareness of the world that belies his age.
“I like creating solutions to big problems, and I try to make people’s lives better,” Aaryan said in an online interview from his home in Sudbury, where he will be in Grade 10 this fall at Lo Ellen Park High School.
You don’t get a problem much bigger than cancer, but for Aaryan there was also a personal interest.
“Cancer was something that affected my family back in 2018, when my grandfather died of stage four lung cancer. I didn’t know him very well, but it was pretty eye-opening to see how a better healthcare system could have saved his life,” he says.
Aaryan admits he loves science, aiming to finish a book every month – usually either around technology or philosophy. Naturally, his favourite subjects in school are science and math. About three years ago, he had to participate in science fairs in school, and that’s when the love affair truly began.
“I created a project called ‘Detecting Diabetes Early With AI’, and happened to do well there, so I was encouraged to move up to the regional science fair, and moved up to nationals (Canada-Wide Science Fair), where I saw what I could really do if I focused on science,” he says.
Drawing on his knowledge of photonics, a field that studies the properties of light, and what he knew about spectral analysis, a widely used method for determining how light behaves in particular conditions, Aaryan came up with the idea of making a light-emitting device that could detect cancer cells. That, in turn, required researching how cancer is treated and the surgical procedures involved.
The molecular structure of a cancer cell is different from that of a normal cell and, as a consequence, reflects light differently. Aaryan’s device would allow a doctor to shine light on tissue and then analyse the differences in light refraction to distinguish healthy cells from cancerous cells. With that knowledge, surgeons performing an operation would be able to find a patient’s cancer with more precision and excise it without leaving cancer cells behind.
In his research, Aaryan studied how surgeons perform resections on cancer patients and how they excise the area affected with cancer. It’s not always easy to spot a tumour among the surrounding tissue and surgeons sometimes have to cut away healthy tissue to make sure they’ve got all the cancer. But even then, as Aaryan discovered, there’s no guarantee that they can cut out the cancer completely.
“The way resections are actually performed is like trying to cut an apple into bite-sized pieces with a chainsaw. It’s not nearly as accurate as it should be,” he says, adding there had to be a better way.
“That’s the reason I decided to build a solution – I call it LightIR,” he says.
LightIR, he explains, combines principles from biotechnology and photonics, and functions on the basis of spectral analysis – “bouncing light off things and seeing how it changes.” Every particle of light, or photon, releases energy and undergoes certain transformations depending on the material on which the light is shone.
“By using sensors built (in a LightIR) to detect photons that behave this way (and) reverse-engineer the (material’s) molecular property with unbelievable precision, which is exactly the sort of precision you’d need to detect cancerous cells,” he says.
Aaryan knew he needed help, particularly with designing a hand-held device. He sent dozens of emails to labs to see if there was interest in testing his device. That’s when he connected with Jerabek, the only one to respond. In the fall of 2019, they struck an arrangement.
If Aaryan could get to Ottawa on Sundays, the MakerSpace’s 3D printers and expertise of its staff and students would be available to him. This included MakerSpace Technicians Ryan Kowtecky and Davis Nguyen.
So, he and his parents made the four-hour drive to Ottawa every Sunday for about three months, where he would work in the MakerSpace lab before making the return trip home.
“I was able to get a lot of help from the Algonquin College MakerSpace. Everyone was kind enough to guide me through the entire process,” he says, adding that after endless tweaks and adjustments, he had a prototype of his LightIR.
“There was just one problem,” he says. “I didn’t have any cancer cells just lying around in my house.”
Aaryan addressed this problem with another outreach, contacting some 40 Ottawa-area academic researchers to ask if they’d let him test his device in their labs. Again, only one responded – Dr. Martin Holcik, Chair of Carleton University’s Health Sciences department and a specialist in molecular biology.
“With my 13-year-old mind having just been blown with the biggest opportunity I might have ever experienced, I headed off to put my ideas into action,” says Aaryan, noting that he was able to test his device on both bone cancer cells and healthy skin cells.
To say the test results were promising is an understatement. As Aaryan puts it: “LightIR was able to classify between cancerous and health cells with over 99.6% accuracy, 99.4% precision, and could make a new diagnosis 50 times every second – around 60,000 times faster than the pathology systems in place today.”
Mind-blowing, indeed, but Aaryan is quick to point out that more work is needed. “I’ve been blessed to be able to pursue this path, but I’m not going to try and pretend that the device is anywhere close to being the next thing.”
What’s next for the now 14-year-old? “LightIR is a constant work-in-progress,” he says, noting he’s working on his tenth prototype, continuing to test, planning to file for a patent, and, very importantly, looking for seed money. He wants to have his device on the market where it can be of benefit.
“Who knows? In a couple of years or so, you might go to your hospital down the street and see a device that you think is awfully familiar.”
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