Tumour imaging technology promises cancer breakthrough

Developed at Canada’s University of Waterloo, the technology relies upon a new technique known as photoacoustic remote sensing microscopy. It works by sending laser light pulses into targeted tissue, which absorbs them, heats up, expands and produces soundwaves. A second laser reads those soundwaves, which are then processed to determine if the tissue is cancerous or non-cancerous. The research, which promises to eliminate the need for secondary oncological surgeries, is published in Science Advances.

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"This is the future, a huge step towards our ultimate goal of revolutionising surgical oncology," said research lead Parsin Haji Reza, a systems design engineering professor at Waterloo. "Intraoperatively, during surgery, the surgeon will be able to see exactly what to cut and how much to cut."