Surgery is essential for the treatment of head and neck (H&N) cancer. However, the resection of vital organs, such as tongue or larynx, can result in tremendous difficulty in speaking, eating, drink, and social activities, thus affects daily quality of life. Therefore, it is critical to remove all cancer cells in order to avoid recurrence but at the same time to spare normal tissue in order to preserve functions during H&N surgery. Currently, intraoperative frozen-section analysis (IFSA) is a standard clinical diagnosis during cancer surgery. However, each IFSA consultation takes time, e.g., 30-45 min while the patient is under anesthesia on the operating table. Multiple IFSA may be required...

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Surgery is essential for the treatment of head and neck (H&N) cancer. However, the resection of vital organs, such as tongue or larynx, can result in tremendous difficulty in speaking, eating, drink, and social activities, thus affects daily quality of life. Therefore, it is critical to remove all cancer cells in order to avoid recurrence but at the same time to spare normal tissue in order to preserve functions during H&N surgery. Currently, intraoperative frozen-section analysis (IFSA) is a standard clinical diagnosis during cancer surgery. However, each IFSA consultation takes time, e.g., 30-45 min while the patient is under anesthesia on the operating table. Multiple IFSA may be required if the margin is positive, and therefore further prolongs surgery, e.g., up to three hours caused by IFSA alone. This extends anesthesia-related risks and increase operating time and medical costs, among which the annual costs for IFSA alone are ? $20B. This research is to develop a smart medical device for cancer detection during surgery. Researchers at UT Dallas and UT Southwestern have developed a prototype hyperspectral imaging (HSI) system for cancer detection during surgery. The preliminary results show that quantitative HSI achieved a high sensitivity and specificity for the detection of H&N cancer in fresh surgical specimens of more than 200 patients. In this research, the HSI technology and artificial intelligence (AI) tools will be integrated into a smart surgical microscope (SSM) for rapid cancer detection during surgery. After the system is tested in animals and human patients in this 2-year project, the AI-powered SSM device will be ready for image-guided surgery of almost all solid tumors such as H&N, skin, brain, breast, and prostate cancers. The utilization of the SSM product in the operating room will help surgeons to save operating time, reduce medical costs, improve surgical outcome, and save patients’ lives.

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