Optical Tool Detects Malignant Cancer Tissue During Surgery

A tool that will enable surgeons to detect malignant breast cancer tissue during surgery using new imaging techniques has been developed by researchers at the University of Western Australia. The tool allows surgeons to assess the thin rim of healthy tissue - known as the 'surgical margin' - to ensure that an entire tumor has been removed during surgery and does not recur. The technology has the potential to spare thousands of breast cancer patients the burden of a second surgery and become an important new addition to the clinical toolkit. The researchers have named their technique 'Optical coherence micro-elastography' (OCME). OCME forms high-resolution images of how tissue feels. This is achieved by applying a mechanical force to the tissue and measuring how much the tissue deforms using the imaging technique. The stiffness of the tissue at each point is then mapped into an image, called an elastogram.

Transcript

00:00:00 In breast conserving surgery a major problem facing surgeons is ensuring that they removed all of the tumor during the surgery this is a really big problem in fact in between twenty and thirty percent of cases and additional surgery is needed to go back and make sure that all of the tissue has been removed so what we're trying to do is to develop

00:00:18 a technology that could provide the surgeon with this information during the surgery we're a team of engineers physicists surgeons and pathologists all working together to try and find a solution to this terrible problem the surgeon removes the lump from the patients and the the goal is to remove all tumor within that lump and

00:00:36 surrounded by an edge of healthy tissue if there's malignant tumor found of the edge of the lump removed it's more likely that the cancer is going to reoccur in the patient so what we're trying to do is develop a high-resolution optical imaging technique that not only takes an image of the tissue it also measures the mechanical properties on the right-hand

00:00:53 side of the images sort of the current gold standard what current surgeons currently rely on its the histology slides problem is the surgeon won't get these slides until days after surgery and that's when the assessment is made whether to go back for a second procedure with our imaging technique we can generate these types of images where the oranges the mechanical properties

00:01:12 and in about 15-20 minutes this is an issue that faces every breast surgeon so the feedback we've received from speaking to surgeons locally nationally and also internationally is that if this technology works they'd certainly be very keen to use it is very much dependent on funding resources etc but our goal is to have

00:01:29 this in theaters in the next five years