Robotic breast cancer surgery

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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. Wirth currentresection methods, on average, one out of every three women undergoing breastconservationsurgery needs at least one additional surgery due incomplete tumor resection.Repeat surgery leads to increased risk of postoperative complications, impaired cosmetics,delayed radiation therapy, increased psychological distress, and increased costs and risks ofundergoing a second general anesthesia. Repeat surgery often leads to full mastectomy,which is a traumatic experience for a patient who expected a curative treatment with breastconservation.As early stage breast cancer is not palpable or visible, surgeons tend to applygenerous safety margins around the target tumor and remove a great deal of healthy breasttissue. In current practice, up to 40% of patients who undergo breast-conservation surgeryexperience severe breast deformity that requires surgical reconstruction, but over half ofthese women do not get treated due to lack reconstructive surgical capacity.In this research, we aim to develop NaviKnife, a next-generation breast conserving surgerynavigation system to achieve complete tumor resection with minimal tissue loss. NaviKnifebuilds on novel multiparametric ultrasound imaging to accurately target the cancer prior toresection and novel real-time metabolomic tissue typing to identify and trace the tumorboundary during resection while guided by a simple robotic arm. NaviKnife assists thesurgeon in precise tumor resection and allows for systematic probing of the resection cavityfor residual cancer and, if necessary, guides the surgeon in targeted shaving of the cavity wallwith minimal loss of healthy tissue, thus guaranteeing complete tumor removal before thewound is closed.