Artificial intelligence technique can detect cancerous tissue in real time

The use of a new surgical technique developed at University College Dublin that uses artificial intelligence to detect cancerous tissue in real time during surgery could radically improve health outcomes. In a study published in Nature Scientific Reports, the new method demonstrates how with the use of a digital camera and dyes, cancer processes in living tissue can be viewed during an operation. This allows for surgeons to see the exact extent of cancers during a procedure, ensuring that the maximum amount of cancerous tissue is surgically removed. "If cancer can be fully detected, it's much more likely to be cured in one single operation or have combination therapies better sequenced and so the risk to the patient of recurrence and complications are markedly reduced," said Ronan Cahill, Professor of Surgery at the UCD School of Medicine and the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital (MMUH). "Dynamic digital discrimination of cancer right at the time of intervention means the surgical team can better perfect the right intervention to the individual patient first time."