By To reduce the number of patient revisits to surgery, surgeons need more reliable to assess the extent of tumour spread. So to provide a better treatment protocol and outcome, they created these goggles to help them see cancer cells during surgery.
The goggles help them decide how much margin to allow when removing the breast cancer.
‘Cancer Goggles’ help surgeons spot malignant tumours
In an interview held with the creator, Professor Samuel Achilefu, he tells of how it works and it’s prospects. He also provides his impressions on where the future may be for the use of cancer goggles.
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In a nutshell, the glasses help you see the cancer cells. So how this works is thatr The patient is injected with a bio-luminescent marker about one hour before the operation.
The marker ‘dye’ then attaches to the cancer cells. The surgeon wears the goggles during the operation and sees the malignant tumour cells glow. ( This is thanks to an infrared light beamed onto the patient.)
In depth; according to betterhealthcaretechnology,
“The surgeon wears the goggles whilst he carries out the breast surgery. The goggles shine NIR light onto the patient’s breast tissue as well as white light. This is for the surgeon to see the patient’s breast while the operation proceeds (the NIR light is not visible to the surgeon).
The NIR and white light images are captured by the camera on the glasses. Then they are processed (in real-time) to generate a superimposed image for the surgeon to see as he/she proceeds with the operation.
The surgeon, can see the tumour edges demarcated by the biomarker colours that denote cancer cell density.”
The future
The professor notes that here’s now great optimism in the tech. He says that the goggle imaging technique plus suitable biomarkers could assist surgeons with other types of oncological surgery as well.
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