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A Robot To Destroy Breast Cancer Cells
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the University of Maryland are developing a robot able to detect and destroy breast cancer cells in a single session. After a tumor is located on an MRI, the robot will perform a biopsy of the breast while the patient is inside the scanner. 'If the biopsy displays cancerous cells, the robot will then insert a probe into the breast until it reaches the tumor. The probe will then burn the cancer cells until they are destroyed.' This looks great, but the researchers have only built a prototype. After they refine this robot, they'll need to go through clinical trials and obtain FDA approval. So this is not a robot that will appear on the medical market before several years."
It had been a while. I was beginning to worry something bad had happened to him...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
They found you a job?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Maybe, but the ladies do need Penicillin afterwards...
If something is promising, can't the process be accelerated (not rushed)? Get a team together to build a better prototype, at the same time have another team build some bio models to test the tool on. That part might take three to five months. While they are doing that, a third team could start lining potentials up for clinical trial. Another eight or so months doing daily trials and refinements. Basically, my ignorance of the field doesn't allow me to understand why it takes more than a year to get something promising into practice (if it ends up actually working).
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Perhaps this isn't a good time to mention it, but you should know that men can get breast cancer, too. Obviously it's not as common. Male breast cancers account for 1% of all breast cancers.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
There's a better description of the technology from the lab involved here:
http://rams.umd.edu/html/news.shtml#nihr01
'The goal of this project is to develop a novel teleoperated robotic system with haptic (sense of touch) feedback capability that will provide accurate feedback to the physician performing Breast biopsy (Bx) and/or Radio-frequency ablation (RFA) under continuous Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Some of the primary challenges of this project include: development of a compact robot manipulator, actuation and sensing that is MRI compatible, efficient use of MRI image sequences to guide the Bx needle and/or RFA probe accurately using adaptive control schemes that incorporate soft-tissue properties as the needle/probe traverses the tissue, and an intuitive user-interface which will provide real-time MRI images and Bx needle/RFA probe tracking with respect to the tumor (target) location.'
You don't have to wait for any cells to grow to make use of the biopsy (it can be assessed directly), but obviously a pathologist will have to examine the sample under a microscope before a treatment decision is made.
While "roboticcopafeel" does sound like that latest toy that all parents should go out and buy for their children, I suggest "robocopafeel" would be a much better pun. In fact, aren't they making that into the next Robocop movie?