What is the iKnife?


Cancer detection techniques, during surgery, have become good enough to pinpoint a tumour but neither images nor the human eye can quickly tell apart healthy and unhealthy tissues. That’s where the iKnife comes handy. Based on electrosurgery — a technology around since 1920s that employs electric current to heat up the tissue that needs excision — the iKnife can detect precisely which tissue needs removing, and which should stay.

The iKnife system consists of an electro-scalpel that causes the tissue to vaporise as it is being cut, leaving in its wake a trail of smoke that is normally sucked away by extraction systems. But by connecting the iKnife to a mass spectrometer — a device that detects the chemical composition of objects and materials — and pumping the smoke toward it, the vapour can be “captured” and analysed for its chemical make-up...................Read more

 

Source: The Hindu


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