Patent ID: 7689269

Claim:
A system for detecting fluorescing nanocrystal tracers at the body of a patient, such nanocrystals being responsive to wavelength defined excitation energy to fluoresce at one or more detection wavelengths, comprising: a probe having a working portion with a forward transmission surface, a photo-detector having a detector output corresponding with non-imaged impinging fluorescent radiation when enabled, mounted in adjacency with said surface, a longpass filter operatively associated with the photo-detector and one or more excitation components energizable to provide said excitation energy forwardly of said transmission surface, and a support for supporting said working portion; and a control assembly, responsive in an initialization mode to derive and store a reference value not operationally associated with said tracer, responsive in a range mode to energize said excitation components under predetermined modulation and enable the photo-detector while the transmission surface is adjacent tissue representing background to derive and store a mean squelch intensity level corresponding with said detection wavelengths and, when in a scan mode wherein said transmission surface is moved in adjacency with tissue suspected of being neoplastic, to energize the excitation components under predetermined modulation and enable the photo-detector to derive the detector output corresponding with said detection wavelengths with intensity levels minus said reference value as a corrected detector output, and responsive to provide a humanly perceptible cue when said corrected detector output represents an intensity level statistically significantly above said mean squelch intensity level.