Compact technology for gliomas detection

Author: EIS Release Date: Feb 14, 2023

Imec has come up with  a promising path to the in-vivo detection of low-grade gliomas (a group of slow-growing brain tumours).

 

The breakthrough was realized by mounting imec’s snapscan VNIR 150 hyperspectral camera on a standard OR-approved surgical microscope.

 

Intraoperative pilot tests were performed at the neurosurgical department of the University Hospital Leuven (KU Leuven).

 

Researchers found  that the compact set-up generated accurate clinical data, ready to be fed into a neural network that can convert those data into actable knowledge.

 

In time, the approach could help surgeons detect intrinsic brain tumors’ exact demarcations intraoperatively and label-free, which would make for a whole new way of providing medical care.

 

Low-grade gliomas are a diverse group of (slow-growing) brain tumors that often arise in young, otherwise healthy patients.

 

While typically considered benign in origin, studies have shown that low-grade gliomas can expand at a rate of four to five millimeters annually and come with the risk of malignant transformation.

 

The tumour’s early surgical resection has thus become a much-favored treatment option – although in-vivo detection of low-grade gliomas and retrieving their exact demarcations is notoriously hard, even with the aid of surgical microscopes.

 

Thanks to its small form factor (10 x 7 x 6.5 cm, and weighing 645 g), and its compatibility with standard C-mount optics, imec’s snapscan VNIR can easily be mounted on a surgical microscope.

 

Imec’s-snapscan-VNIR-150-camera-mounted-on-the-ZEISS-surgical-microscope

 

It makes for a compact set-up that can be incorporated in hospitals’ stringent clinical workflows, contrary to the bulky systems used in previous

 

“Giving surgeons the proper tools to detect these tumors in-vivo would make for an important breakthrough. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology shows great potential to do just that,” says imec’s Roeland Vandebriel,  “Using HSI, brain tissue is illuminated, after which its reflected light is captured in many narrow spectral bands – resulting in a different spectral signature for healthy and anomalous cells.”

 

Bulky hardware and integration challenges have prevented HSI technology from being straightforwardly used in hospitals’ operating theatres.

 

Thanks to its small form factor (10 x 7 x 6.5 cm, and weighing 645 g), and its compatibility with standard C-mount optics, imec’s snapscan VNIR can easily be mounted on a surgical microscope.

 

It makes for a compact set-up that can be incorporated in hospitals’ stringent clinical workflows, contrary to the bulky systems used in previous studies.

 

The next step is moving on to video-rate hyperspectral imaging for real-time tumour classification

 

Anyone interested in  in experimenting with imec’s snapscan and/or snapshot hyperspectral cameras can discover  the technology’s potential in domains as diverse as agriculture, sorting, or a variety of medical applications from imec’s hyperspectral webpages