Tulane University in New Orleans kicked off a $23 million project to further high-resolution, rapid-imaging microscopy for detecting residual cancer cells on the surface of surgically removed organs.
The bedside scanning device could eventually enable slide-free pathology and become an alternative to pathologists examining thin sections of tumors under a microscope to examine the borders between cancer and healthy tissue.
Called MAGIC-SCAN (Machine-learning Assisted Gigantic Image Cancer margin SCANner), the innovative tissue imaging system will be designed to highlight cancer at a cellular level and render a detailed 3D map of the surface of the tumor, according to Tulane University. Tulane researchers have already been developing the technology using prostate and colorectal cancer cases and have reduced detection time to about 45 minutes, the university said in a news release.
Tulane supplied a video of the prototype to demonstrate how the system works.
(Photo and video courtesy of Vincent Postle and Tulane University)“Currently, it can take days to weeks before a surgeon knows whether all the tumor has been removed, and our goal is to get that down to 10 minutes, while the patient is still on the table,” said Dr. J. Quincy Brown (see video), associate professor of biomedical engineering in the Tulane School of Science and Engineering and lead researcher on the project. “If successful, our work would transform cancer surgery as we know it.”
Enabled by an up to $23 million grant, the technology will incorporate optical-sectioning, super-resolution structured illumination microscopy to image at what researchers said will be twice the resolution of conventional microscopes. The system will also incorporate automation, computing infrastructure, and machine learning.
Tulane University's project is part of a broader initiative by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop precision surgical interventions that improve surgical accuracy and reduce errors, Tulane said. Receiving the full funding amount will require the team to reach certain milestones. Tulane's spinout company Instapath will support development of the scanner toward clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to the university.
Clinical validation of the device will involve partners at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and Southeast Louisiana Veterans Hospital and East Jefferson General Hospital in New Orleans. Collaborators also include researchers from the University of Georgia, who will work on improving the quality of the imaging resolution, and the University of Utah, who will work on the cyber infrastructure required to handle patient data that is needed to train the machine-learning models, according to Tulane.
