Real-time Breast Cancer Surgery Navigation

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Breast cancer affects 1 in 8 women during their lives and is the second-leading cause offemale cancer related deaths. The ideal treatment is breast-conservation surgery during itsearly stage to remove the cancer while conserving healthy parts of the breast.When cancer cells are found on the edge of the resected tissue, the probability of recurrenceis extremely high and the patient must have repeat surgery. On average, one out of everythree or four women undergoing breast-conservation surgery needs at least one additionalsurgery due to tumor cells found on the resection margins. Repeat surgery leads to increasedrisk of postoperative complications, impaired cosmesis, delaying radiation therapy, increasedpsychological distress, increased costs, and risks of undergoing a second generalanesthesia. Repeat surgery often leads to full mastectomy, which is a traumatic experiencefor a patient who expected a curative treatment with breast-conservation.Through development of a novel real-time electromagnetic navigation system, we intend toimprove the accuracy of breast cancer resection, which would lead to a significant reductionin the number of repeat surgeries, thus yielding major quality of life benefits for patients andmuch decreased costs for health care.