Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital and Polytechnique Montréal became a part of a collaborative effort to develop a new spectroscopy probe to detect different types of brain tumors. This new technology allows neurosurgeons to locate brain neoplasms in real-time and could potentially become the new standard in brain surgery.
Healthy brain tissue is difficult to differentiate visually from cancerous type, and patients who have these tumors removed often need to have follow up surgery again as not all of the cancer was taken out. The new device emits laser light onto the tissue and acquires a signal that can determine some characteristics of the molecular makeup within. The Raman probe can successfully identify cancerous tissue 92% of the time, and the probes have been tested intraoperatively on patients with gliomas of grade 2, 3, and 4.
Clinical studies have been planned to take place at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital on patients with recurrent and newly diagnosed glioblastoma.
Here are the researchers talking about the new probe:
McGill University: Revolutionary new probe zooms in on cancer…
Study in Science Translational Medicine: Intraoperative Brain Cancer Detection with Raman Spectroscopy in humans…