RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 An innovative non-invasive technique for subcutaneous tumour measurements JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 622605 DO 10.1101/622605 A1 Juan Delgado-SanMartin A1 Beate Ehrhardt A1 Marcin Paczkowski A1 Sean Hackett A1 Andrew Smith A1 Wajahat Waraich A1 James Klatzow A1 Adeala Zabair A1 Anna Chabokdast A1 Leonardo Rubio-Navarro A1 Amar Rahi A1 Zena Wilson YR 2019 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/29/622605.abstract AB In oncological drug development, animal studies continue to play a central role in which the volume of subcutaneous tumours is monitored to assess the efficacy of new drugs. Tumour volume is currently estimated by measuring length and width with callipers and then estimating the volume of the tumour as if it were a regular spheroid. However, this method is subjective, insufficiently traceable, and is subject to error in the accuracy of volume estimates as tumours frequently are irregular.This paper explores the extent of inconsistencies in calliper measurements by conducting a statistical review of a large dataset consisting of 2,500 tumour volume measurements from 1,600 mice by multiple operators across 6 mouse strains and 20 tumour models. We also explore the impact of six different tumour morphologies on volume estimation and the detection of treatment effects using a computational tumour growth model. Finally, we propose an alternative method to callipers for estimating volume – BioVolume™, a 3D scanning technique. BioVolume simultaneously captures both stereo RGB (Red, Green and Blue) images from different light sources and infrared thermal images of the tumour. It detects the tumour region automatically and estimates the tumour volume in under a second. BioVolume has been tested on a dataset of 297 scans from over 120 mice collected by four different operators.This work demonstrates that it is possible to record tumour measurements in a rapid, minimally invasive, morphology-independent way, and with less human-bias compared to callipers, whilst also improving data traceability. Furthermore, the images collected by BioVolume may be useful, for example, as a source of biomarkers for animal welfare and secondary drug toxicity / efficacy.