Intelligent Surgical Knife to Detect Cancer within Seconds

Now researchers have invented a surgical intelligent knife (iKnife) that can cancerous growth of human tissues within seconds. This newly developed surgical knife will reduce diagnosis time helping in the timely treatment of cancer and enabling a higher rate of patient survival.

This surgical knife could detect womb cancer within seconds. As per experts, this special surgical knife also known as Rapid Evaporative Ionisation Mass Spectrometry (REIMS) or the surgical intelligent knife (iKnife) can rapidly identify human tissues in real time through a form of ambient mass spectrometry.

Experts at the Imperial College London have revealed that the intelligent surgical knife could find the presence of endometrial cancer using standard electrosurgical methods. It has been successfully used in different tissue types, including lungs, colon, and liver.

The details of the studies related to this innovative instrument have been published in the journal Cancers, which states that the aim of the study was to ascertain whether the iKnife can correctly identify endometrial cancer from endometrial Pipelle biopsy samples.

Biopsy tissue samples from 150 women with suspected womb cancer were tested through this iKnife and the results were compared with that of conventional diagnosis methods.

“The iKnife has the potential to completely revolutionise the way we manage people seen in the rapid-access clinics with significant abnormal vaginal bleeding who have been referred for potential diagnosis of endometrial cancer,” Prof Sadaf Ghaem-Maghami, who led the research, told The Guardian.