Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers in the male population and represents about 20% of all cancers diagnosed in men. Estimates in Italy speak of around 35,000 new cases a year, but the risk of the disease having an unfortunate outcome is low, especially if intervention is made in the initial stages.
The system that we intend to present at Maker Faire Rome 2023, developed as part of the project 'BARTOLO - Sviluppo ed applicazione di nuove tecnologie robotiche per la diagnosi bioptica del tumore prostatico’ finanziato dalla Regione Campania (POR CAMPANIA FESR 2014/2020), consists in a miniaturized probe, based on optical fiber technology and integrated inside a medical needle, capable of measuring the elastic consistency of biological tissues with high spatial resolution (the fiber sensor in fact has a diameter of less than a millimetre), for the diagnosis of prostate cancer.