"Cutting By Color"

Surgery, to remove cancerous tissue, has always included cutting away a portion of healthy tissue around the lesion for assurance that all of the bad cells are, in fact, removed. 

Researchers have begun early clinical trials with an imaging system used to emphasize cancerous tissue in the body with color so that surgeons no longer have issues with distinguishing between diseased and normal tissue. Known as FLARE, or Fluorescence-Assisted Resection and Exploration, this new system uses "a near-infrared (NIR) imaging system, a video monitor, and a computer" to target cancer cells after dyes have been injected into the patient. The images that are shown by the video monitor are then "superimposed over the images of the normal surgical field" to provide a better view of what would normally be "invisible." This technique can now be developed for many other uses by coming up with specific agents for different parts of the body to be highlighted for visualization.

As students, we may sometimes find ourselves ignorant of the fact that the colorful and well defined regions of the body are not in occurrence in real life. We use textbooks and aids that accommodate the learning of physiology with pictures that include purple endocrine systems and blue frontal lobes but reality does not offer such visual assistance. With new biotechnology that can provide for well defined, colorful areas of the body, we may be able to memorize the regions as well as the colors when studying and eventually perform more precise and conscious surgeries.  

"Cutting By Color: New Imaging Technique For More Precise Cancer Surgery"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819160055.htm

Brittany Sanchez

VTPP 434-502