Researchers from Imperial College London developed a technique to identify whether a tissue is cancerous or not using Rapid Evaporative Ionization Mass Spectrometry (REIMS) and that too intraoperatively. This could potentially revolutionize Oncosurgery.
The article was published in Science Translational Medicine recently. And they used nothing but the smoke coming from the electrosurgery! This smoke would be sent to a mass spectrometer which will do the chemical analysis of the smoke and compare it with a database containing mass spectrometric data of cancerous and non-cancerous tissues, the latter was done ex-vivo. They tested it on 81 patients and the results matched 100% with the post-operative histological diagnosis. Ofcourse, further studies are required for solid proof, but it looks like its only a matter of time.
The coupling of REIMS technology with the electrosurgery for tissue diagnostics is know as the intelligent knife (iKnife).
Read the whole research article for more details : DOI here
The article was published in Science Translational Medicine recently. And they used nothing but the smoke coming from the electrosurgery! This smoke would be sent to a mass spectrometer which will do the chemical analysis of the smoke and compare it with a database containing mass spectrometric data of cancerous and non-cancerous tissues, the latter was done ex-vivo. They tested it on 81 patients and the results matched 100% with the post-operative histological diagnosis. Ofcourse, further studies are required for solid proof, but it looks like its only a matter of time.
The coupling of REIMS technology with the electrosurgery for tissue diagnostics is know as the intelligent knife (iKnife).
Read the whole research article for more details : DOI here
