Project overview
Psoriasis is a common, long-term skin disease affecting >1 million people in the UK, >125 million people worldwide, and documented as “a serious global problem” by the World Health Organisation. Psoriasis is a risk factor for developing arthritis and other diseases (heart disease, stroke, diabetes), and the fact that psoriasis is visible on the skin causes stress, depression, embarrassment, etc. and a lower quality of life for affected people. In the UK, NHS costs for treating psoriasis are up to approximately £10,000 per patient each year. Ultraviolet light (UV) is a common treatment for psoriasis and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) advises doctors to offer UV treatment to people with psoriasis that cannot be controlled with creams or ointments alone. UV treatment is available in most dermatology departments in the UK (and Europe, USA, etc.), and patients with psoriasis are usually treated inside UV cabinets that shine UV on all areas of the skin. However, there are two problems with this approach; (i) exposure of normal skin can cause sunburn, so UV doses have to be lower than doses that the psoriasis can cope with, therefore treatment is given 3 times per week and the course takes several weeks to complete, and (ii) exposure of normal skin can lead to later development of skin cancer. In certain cases, a hand-held UV instrument can be used, where a trained nurse moves the UV over specific areas of the patient s skin, but this approach for all patients would require vast numbers of additional nurses and is well beyond the funding of the NHS. We plan to develop an automatic, safe and robust method of treating psoriasis where only the psoriatic skin, and not the normal skin, is treated with UV, without the need for a nurse to direct the UV beam onto the psoriatic skin. Whilst this approach would have been unthinkable five years ago, the recent developments in artificial intelligence (specifically in allowing computers to “identify” things) now makes this possible. Similar to a self-driving car that uses cameras to monitor the road and drive safely around pedestrians whilst following the rules of the road, here we are proposing a “self-driving UV laser” that uses cameras to scan a patient s skin to identify where the psoriasis is and then shine the UV treatment only onto the psoriasis. This will allow personalised treatment for each patient at potentially very low costs, and would bring many benefits, including (a) patients needing fewer treatment visits, (b) quicker clearance of their psoriasis, (c) better safety through lower risk of skin cancer, (d) reduced time on waiting list for treatment, (e) the ability to treat more patients, and (f) reduced staff costs.
