Cancer remains a significant global challenge, with one diagnosis every two minutes in the UK alone. Due to a lack of reliable intraoperative visualization tools, surgeons often rely on a sense of touch or the naked eye to distinguish between cancerous and healthy tissue. Despite advances in preoperative imaging methods such as PET, CT, and MRI, pinpointing the precise location of cancerous tissue during surgery remains a formidable task. Recently, minimally invasive surgery has garnered increasing attention for its potential to minimize blood loss and shorten recovery times. However, this approach presents another unique challenge for surgeons as they lose tactile feedback, making it even more difficult to locate cancerous tissue accurately. Lightpoint Medical Ltd. has introduced a miniaturized cancer detection probe namedSENSEI. This advanced tool, the first of its kind, leverages the cancer-targeting capabilities of nuclear agents typically used in nuclear imaging. By detecting the emitted gamma signal from a radiotracer that accumulates in cancerous tissue, surgeons gain real-time insights into the location of cancer during surgery. “This probe can be inserted into the human abdomen and then grasped by a surgical tool,” Baoru tells us. “However, using this probe presents a visualization challenge because it’s non-imaging and is air-gapped from the tissue, so it’s challenging for the surgeon to locate the probesensing area on the tissue surface. Determining the sensing area is crucial because we can have some signal potentially indicating the cancerous tissue and the affected lymph nodes.” Geometrically, the sensing area is Baoru Huang is a PhD candidate at the Hamlyn Centre, Imperial College London, supervised by Daniel Elson and Stamatia (Matina) Giannarou. Her work explores an innovative and groundbreaking visualization technique that holds significant promise for advancing cancer surgery. She speaks to us ahead of her oral and poster presentations this afternoon. Detecting the Sensing Area of a Laparoscopic Probe in Minimally Invasive Cancer Surgery 8 DAILY MICCAI Monday Oral Presentation
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