Cancer surgeons could soon be using an "intelligent knife" to help them diagnose tumours, it was revealed last night.
The project, involving researchers in London, UK, and Hungary, uses the smoke generated by electro-surgical knives to diagnose tissue.
This would mean surgeons might be able to tell whether tissue was cancerous or non-cancerous – enabling them to fine-tune an operation while undertaking it, researchers said.
They say the "iKnife" will also be able to test for blood supply or the presence of bacteria.
The project was revealed in Science Translational Medicine last night.
Researchers analysed samples from more than 300 cancer patients, creating a library of tissue types. They say the iKnife can give a diagnosis within three seconds.
The iKnife was tested on 81 patients after development and its readings compared with those from conventional laboratory analysis.
One of the researchers was former UK health minister Lord Darzi, a professor of surgery.
He said: “In cancer surgery, you want to take out as little healthy tissue as possible, but you have to ensure that you remove all of the cancer.
"There is a real need for technology that can help the surgeon determine which tissue to cut out and which to leave in."
Developer Dr Zoltan Takats, who is based at Imperial College, said: "These results provide compelling evidence that the iKnife can be applied in a wide range of cancer surgery procedures.
“It provides a result almost instantly, allowing surgeons to carry out procedures with a level of accuracy that hasn’t been possible before. We believe it has the potential to reduce tumour recurrence rates and enable more patients to survive.”
Balog et al. Intraoperative tissue identification using rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry. Sci. Transl. Med. 17 July 2013 5, 194ra93 (2013).
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