A new kind of imaging technology invented at Waterloo Engineering could tell cancer doctors exactly where to cut during surgery to remove tumors.
That would eliminate secondary surgeries to get malignant tissue that was missed the first time, which happens in about 10 per cent of all cancer cases that involve tumors.
“This will have a tremendous impact on the economics of health-care, be amazing for patients and give clinicians a great new tool,” said Parsin Haji Reza, a systems design engineering professor who leads the research project. “It will save a great deal of time and money and anxiety.”
Doctors must now wait up to two weeks for lab results after surgery to determine if a tumor has been completely removed or not.
When integrated into a surgical microscope, the ultimate goal of the project, the new technology – which uses the way light from lasers interacts with cancerous and healthy tissues to distinguish between them – could almost instantly provide that information while surgery was in progress.
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Parsin Haji Reza, who is developing technology to precisely locate the edges of cancer tumors during surgery, works in his lab at Waterloo Engineering.