In neurosurgery, the use of electronic scalpels has now become a norm: burning the tissue means dispersing its molecules, literally sending them up in smoke.
The method developed by researchers at the University of Tampere in Finland includes a device capable of "smelling" the surgical smoke produced by cuts in real time, thus analyzing the composition of the tissues on which one is operating.
The study was published in the Journal of Neurosurgery.
“In current clinical practice the process is much more complex: a very small sample of the tumor is analyzed after having taken it, frozen it and sent it to a pathologist during the operation,” says the researcher Ilkka Haapala.
Today the pathologist produces an analysis after observation under the microscope and calls the operating room to provide the response. It already looks like something a hundred years ago.
“Our new method gives the possibility of analyzing tissues in real time and on many points of the tumor, with the advantage of being able to adopt a device that connects with the instrumentation already present,” explains Haapala.
How the “electronic nose” works
The fumes produced by the electronic scalpel pass through an electric field produced by the device: each type of smoke (and therefore of fabric) has a precise distribution of ions in an electric field. In other words, it has its own olfactory imprint.
A machine learning system is connected to the "nose" which helps it refine its analyzes as it collects data: the accuracy of the system in classifying benign and malignant tumors was already 83% after the first uses, and in a short time (after approximately 700 analyzes carried out) it is now at 94%.
