Real-time Breast Cancer Surgery Navigation

乳腺癌影响八分之一的妇女在他们的生活中，是第二大原因女性癌症相关的死亡。理想的治疗方法是在早期进行保乳手术，在切除癌细胞的同时保留乳房的健康部分。当切除组织的边缘发现癌细胞时，复发的可能性极高，患者必须再次手术。平均而言，每三到四名接受保乳手术的女性中就有一名需要至少一次额外的手术，因为在切除边缘发现了肿瘤细胞。重复手术会增加术后并发症的风险，影响美观，延迟放射治疗，增加心理压力，增加费用，以及经历第二次全身麻醉的风险。重复手术通常导致全乳房切除术，这对期望保乳治疗的患者来说是一种创伤性经历。通过开发一种新型的实时电磁导航系统，我们打算提高乳腺癌切除术的准确性，这将导致重复手术的数量显著减少，从而为患者带来重大的生活质量益处，并大大降低医疗保健成本。

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.