Cancer treatment could be dramatically improved by an invention at the University of Waterloo to precisely locate the edges of tumors during surgery to remove them.
The new imaging technology uses the way light from lasers interacts with cancerous and healthy tissues to distinguish between them in real-time and with no physical contact, an advancement with the potential to eliminate the need for secondary surgeries to get missed malignant tissue.
“This is the future, a huge step towards our ultimate goal of revolutionizing surgical oncology,” said Parsin Haji Reza, a systems design engineering professor who leads the project. “Intraoperatively, during surgery, the surgeon will be able to see exactly what to cut and how much to cut.”
A paper on the work, All-optical Reflection-mode Microscopic Histology of Unstained Human Tissues, was published today in the journal Scientific Reports.
Read more at University of Waterloo
Image Credit: University of Waterloo/ Parsin Haji Reza