Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin developed a cancer detection tool that could help ensure accuracy during tumor removal surgeries.
A team of scientists led by Livia Schiavinato Eberlin, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry at UT Austin, invented the MasSpec Pen, a handheld instrument that gives surgeons more precise diagnostic information about which tissue to cut and which to preserve.
The MasSpec Pen is faster and more accurate than the current method for diagnosing cancer and determining boundaries between cancerous and normal tissue in surgery, which is called frozen section analysis, according to the researchers.
Based on a test of tissues from 253 cancer patients, researchers determined the MasSpec Pen took only 10 seconds to diagnose cancerous tissue with more than 96 percent accuracy, while frozen section analysis can take 30 minutes or more and produces unreliable results in 10 to 20 percent of cases.
"Any time we can offer the patient a more precise surgery, a quicker surgery or a safer surgery, that's something we want to do," said James Suliburk, MD, head of endocrine surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and a collaborator on the project. "This technology does all three."
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