Butterfly vision inspires surgical camera for cancer operations

The morpho butterfly’s ability to detect multispectral images has inspired the development of a surgical camera that could improve outcomes of cancer surgery.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Washington University in St. Louis have developed the tiny surgical camera, which connects a surgeon’s goggles and detects infrared signals given off by tumour-binding dyes. This lets the surgeon find and remove all of the cancerous tissue. The study was published in the journal Optica.

"By looking at the way nature has designed the visual systems of insects, we can address serious problems that exist with cancer surgery today and make sure there are no cancer cells left behind during surgery," said study leader Viktor Gruev, an Illinois professor of electrical and computer engineering and of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. "This technology is more sensitive, more accurate, much smaller and lower-cost than currently available instruments that are FDA-approved to detect these signals."