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Smart Knife Sniffs Out Cancer Cells

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-other-knives-in-the-world-are-now-called-dumbknives dept.

sciencehabit writes "When surgeons can't determine the edges of a tumor, it's a problem. Cut too much, and they risk hurting the patient. Cut too little, and they may leave stray cancer cells behind. Now, researchers have developed a surgical knife that can sniff the smoke made as it cuts tissue, almost instantly detecting whether cells are cancerous or healthy. The 'intelligent knife,' or iKnife could distinguish normal and tumor tissues from different organs, such as breast, liver, and brain, and could even identify the origin of a tumor that was a metastasis, a secondary growth seeded by a primary tumor elsewhere in the body."

6 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Define cancer cell. by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seriously, if there were a truly defining characteristic of cancer cells, we'd be in a lot better shape to cure it. Cancer has a multitude of causes and phenotypes.

    1. Re:Define cancer cell. by Xicor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      there may be different underlying causes as well as different types of cancer, but im sure there are markers that say "hey, this is cancerous".... wait... we already knew there were markers like that. if a doctor can tell if cells are cancerous, why shouldnt a computer be able to do it?

  2. iDevice again? by intermodal · · Score: 3, Funny

    can somebody please pick another letter of the alphabet? e- wore itself out years ago, i- seems to be getting old. Time to move on to the next vowel? oKnife? Might be big in Ireland...

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  3. Replace the doctor with a robot by schneidafunk · · Score: 2

    Seriously, how close are we to having this precision surgery done by a robot.

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  4. That is amazing.. by houbou · · Score: 2

    This means that surgeons will now have a new skill to learn as they must learn to recognize the signs and adapt their surgical styles to complement this new tool. Still, this is amazing.. It's like PhotoShop's Magic Wand for selecting pieces of a graphic, except this is for surgical cancer removal.. :)

  5. Science Fiction Comes True by ChrisMaple · · Score: 2

    The Little Black Bag, C. M. Kornbluth, 1950 (Astounding Science Fiction).

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