As with all long trips, the days before are an exciting combination of crazed preparations and intermittent moments of exhilarating realization that your life is about to change for the next few months. In short, anything but relaxing.
But that’s okay! It is quite the opportunity I have been presented to be able to test medical devices in Brazil — not only is it a professional experience, but also a cultural one! Being Venezuelan, I’m very much looking forward to spending time in South America again.
Now down to business. Our main project in Brazil centers around the clinical evaluation of the teledermatology system, a device designed to improve the diagnosis of skin cancer in southern Brazil. The device consists of two components — a main dermoscope attachment and an extension leg. In essence, it is a attachment to mobile phones that allows users to take standardized images of skin lesions at two distances (short range and mid range). The user uses this device in conjunction with a mobile app that organizes the images and packages them to be sent to the main headquarters at the Hospital do Câncer de Barretos.
But several issues needed to be addressed before we departed. In particular, improving both the image quality and the usability of the device.
To improve image quality, we identified that the light provided by a small LED inside the dermoscope was leaking out, thus producing darker and lower quality images. One solution that really contained the light was coating the device with black spray paint.
Left Light leaks out from the dermoscope, producing a darker and lower quality image.
Right After a coating of black spray paint, the only light that is visible now is escaping through the upper lens.
A usability problem we faced was interference between the LED button on the back of the dermoscope and the mobile phone — the button was making it hard to slide the dermoscope in front of the phone’s camera lens. We were able to find another button that allowed smoother sliding, and have now succesfully integrated it with the rest of circuitry.
We still have a few more issues to resolve, but overall the device is on its way to being ready for testing in Brazil.
Megh and I just finished having um cafezinho in Terminal 2 of the São Paulo airport, waiting for our flight to Riberão Preto, from where Edvaldo is gonna pick up and take us to Barretos. So far, the day has been pretty exciting — we toured the São Paulo airport after we discovered our original terminal was closed (surprise, it’s a holiday today), and have had great experiences practicing our Portuguese with everyone we’ve had to interact. Megh keeps wanting to speak Spanish, whereas I keep responding in French for some reason, but give us some time and I’m sure we’ll develop some solid conversational Brazilian Portuguese.
Até a próxima!