Hasta La Gadget!

Jul 18

Intelligent ‘iKnife’ diagnoses cancer midsurgery

The knife tells surgeons in real time whether tissue is malignant or benign.

(Credit: Imperial College London)

A new surgical knife that leans on both old and new technology could reduce surgery time and the need for follow-up operations by diagnosing cancer midcut.

Developed by Zoltan Takats of Imperial College London, the iKnife is based on a technology that dates back to the 1920s called electrosurgery, where an electrical current rapidly heats tissue to make incisions with minimal blood loss. But it’s the vapors from the heated tissue that ultimately come into play.

Instead of sucking away the smoke into extraction systems, Takats decided to connect the knife to a mass spectrometer to analyze the chemicals in the biological sample. (Because different cell types produce metabolites in different concentrations, a biological sample can reveal a lot of detail about the state of the tissue.)

In fact, Takats says there’s no reason why the iKnife can’t identify many other features beyond tumor malignancy — think types of bacteria present in a sample, or what a sample actually is. (Horsemeat vs. beef, anyone?)

For this stud… [Read more]