Mantis shrimp inspired this cancer-detecting camera

Nature is truly an inspiration for budding scientists everywhere – otherwise, how else would ordinary man get the inspiration to actually take to the skies in the past, so much so that we have been living in the jet age for quite the longest time already? Well, we have reported on how dogs are able to be trained to sniff out cancer cells, and this time around, it would be a crustacean that would help us humans out.

The special compound eyes of mantis shrimp are the blueprint of a new breed of camera that will detect cancers and visualise brain activity, according to scientists at the University of Queensland in Australia. Using miniscule polarisers instead of the usual colour filter arrays, these sophisticated digital cameras see the polarisation of light rather than the colour – and that means it will be able to see previously unseeable things such as cancer tissue. This groundbreaking technology is inspired by the mantis shrimp which has eyes that “use light polarisation to detect and discriminate between objects.” Professor Justin Marshall, who works at the University’s Queensland Brain Institute, said that cancerous tissue reflects polarised light differently to healthy tissue. It is this difference that the mantis shrimp can identify.