Proof of concept for the sapphire scalpel combining tissue dissection and optical diagnosis.

Objectives: The development of compact diagnostic probes and instruments with an ability to direct access to organs and tissues and integration of these instruments into surgical workflows is an important task of modern physics and medicine. The need for such tools is essential for surgical oncology, where intraoperative visualization and demarcation of tumor margins define further prognosis and survival of patients. In this paper, the possible solution for this intraoperative imaging problem is proposed and its feasibility to detect tumorous tissue is studied experimentally.

In situ terahertz monitoring of an ice ball formation during tissue cryosurgery: a feasibility test.

Significance: Uncontrolled cryoablation of tissues is a strong reason limiting the wide application of cryosurgery and cryotherapy due to the certain risks of unpredicted damaging of healthy tissues. The existing guiding techniques are unable to be applied in situ or provide insufficient spatial resolution. Terahertz (THz) pulsed spectroscopy (TPS) based on sensitivity of THz time-domain signal to changes of tissue properties caused by freezing could form the basis of an instrument for observation of the ice ball formation.

Optimization of sapphire capillary needles for interstitial and percutaneous laser medicine.

Sapphire capillary needles fabricated by edge-defined film-fed growth (EFG) technique hold strong potential in laser thermotherapy and photodynamic therapy, thanks to the advanced physical properties of sapphire. These needles feature an as-grown optical quality, their length is tens of centimeters, and they contain internal capillary channels, with open or closed ends. They can serve as optically transparent bearing elements with optical fibers introduced into their capillary channels in order to deliver laser radiation to biological tissues for therapeutic and, in some cases, diagnostic purposes.

Terahertz spectroscopy of gelatin-embedded human brain gliomas of different grades: a road toward intraoperative THz diagnosis.

We applied terahertz (THz)-pulsed spectroscopy to study ex vivo the refractive index and absorption coefficient of human brain gliomas featuring different grades, as well as perifocal regions containing both intact and edematous tissues. Glioma samples from 26 patients were considered and analyzed according to further histological examination. In order to fix tissues for the THz measurements, we applied gelatin embedding, which allows for sustaining their THz response unaltered, as compared to that of the freshly excised tissues.