Improving Margins of Resection in Surgical Oncology with the Intelligent Surgical Knife

Abstract

Margins of resection in surgical oncology are often a trade-off between decreasing cancer recurrence and preserving a patient’s aesthetic and function. The intelligent surgical knife (iKnife) aims to provide margins of resection in real-time leading to improved clinical outcomes while giving surgeons the confidence to excise tumors with smaller margins of resection. The iKnife utilizes mass spectrometry to identify the lipid and protein profiles of cells as they are cut with an electric cauterization tool. Through techniques such as multivariate analysis, proprietary software can discern healthy and cancerous tissue without the need for histological sectioning and staining. The effectiveness of the iKnife has been demonstrated ex vivo and in vivo with several types of tumors such as breast, ovarian, and colon cancer. The iKnife presents an exciting novel tool in the field of surgical oncology with the ability to provide an avenue to personalized medicine in the future.