Surgical Scalpel Sniffs Out Tumors While It Cuts
A chemical sniffer combined with a scalpel is slated to begin human clinical trials next month Transforming surgical scalpels into imaging tools could provide instant feedback on suspicious tumors or tissues. European researchers plan for the new imaging tools to enter clinical trials next month. The concept combines an elecroscalpel with a mass spectrometer to profile the molecular structures of whatever the scalpel happens to cut. It carries out its molecular analysis by using "surgical smoke," or gaseous ions produced as a waste product of the electroscalpels, which requires removal anyway during surgery. "We want to provide a tool that's right in their hands, so that if they think a structure looks suspicious, they can just test it," said Zoltan Takats, a biomedical researcher at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, in an interview with Technology Review. Surgical smoke fumes get sucked into the mass spectrometer, where...