SpectraScience, Inc, a San Diego-based medical device company, has been awarded US Patent number 7,459,696 for its methods and apparatus for calibrating spectral data.

Jim Hitchin, SpectraScience's CEO, commented, "This is another key patent in our expanding intellectual property portfolio that underscores our commitment at SpectraScience to develop better, more reliable cancer screening technologies."

The invention provides methods for calibrating spectral data acquisition systems. These calibration methods produce spectral data sufficiently accurate for use in tissue classification algorithms. The invention improves the accuracy of spectral-based tissue classification schemes, in part, by properly accounting for spatial variations, instrument-to-instrument variations, and patient-to-patient variations in the acquisition of spectral data from tissue samples.

Hitchin added, "Accurate calibration is critical to earlier and more effective identification of normal, pre-cancerous and/or cancerous tissue, and this invention provides methods of making our screening devices more useful to the physician and, more importantly, to the patient."

SpectraScience holds approximately 60 patents worldwide that have been issued or are pending on its WavSTAT Optical Biopsy and LUMA Cervical Imaging Systems. These devices are used to diagnose tissue quickly to determine if it is normal, pre-cancerous, or cancerous. The WavSTAT and LUMA Systems are currently approved by the FDA for detecting pre-cancerous and cancerous tissue in the colon and cervix, respectively. An evaluation of the WavSTAT for detection of pre-cancers in the throat (Barrett's esophagus) is being tested.

SpectraScience is a San Diego-based medical device company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets spectrophotometry systems capable of determining whether tissue is normal, pre-cancerous or cancerous without physically removing tissue from the body.