A new robot-assisted surgery technique designed to improve cancer surgical outcomes and patient care has received £1.25 million in funding.

The method is being developed by researchers from the National Robotarium – a partnership between Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh, industry partners, and Edinburgh-based clinicians.

The robotic surgery technique will help decide how much a patient’s tissue is impacted by cancer and should be removed.

According to the partnership, the new method will provide surgeons with real-time feedback, which will allow for greater precision when differentiating normal from abnormal tissue.

“This new technique will offer surgeons a quantitative, real-time, reliable and evidence-based method for determining the optimal surgical margin to make when removing a tumour,” said Dr Yuhang Chen, National Robotarium, who is leading the research. “Surgeons operating along a ‘keyhole’ or using techniques for minimally invasive surgery need to identify different structures or diseased areas, even when these look very similar.

“Our work is aimed at identifying the optimum margin in cancer surgery, to allow the removal of a tumour together with enough tissue to ensure the cancer is completely removed, but without excess being lost."

Chen said that the team is bringing together expertise from laser manufacturing, fibre-optic sensors, micromechanical probing, and computational modelling to create a "mechanical 'imaging' probe capable of detecting cancerous tissue that can be used with a standard minimally-invasive surgery instrument".

"Coupled to this, we’ll be building a 'mechanically-intelligent' data modelling framework and will integrate it into the probe operation for tumour identification and surgical margin assessment," he added. "This will effectively eliminate the margin of error for surgeons, giving them confidence that they have removed the correct amount of tissue during the operation itself and reduce the need for further invasive surgery for patients.”

The funding was awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

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