Prism winner nabs Edison Award

For its Aura noninvasive skin cancer detection device, !%Verisante Technology Inc.%! of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, received a bronze Edison Award in April. The Aura allows Raman-based disease detection to move into the doctor’s office for the first time, and, unlike other optical skin cancer detectors, it doesn’t use visual characteristics to assess lesions but instead analyzes the biochemical changes in the skin (based on molecular vibrations) using a near-IR (785 nm) laser. A clinical study showed that the device had a success rate of 99 percent in detecting the disease and the potential to reduce unnecessary biopsies by 50 to 100 percent. The award program, named after Thomas Alva Edison, is conducted by Edison Universe, an organization dedicated to assisting future innovators. For the device, Verisante also won a 2013 Prism Award for Photonics Innovation, an honor bestowed by SPIE and Photonics Media.