News Archive

An unusual partnership between a group of surgeons and engineers at UWA is showing promising results that could change the way cancer is detected.

Professor Christobel Saunders, a cancer surgeon from the School of Surgery, and Dr Peter Robbins from PathWest have joined forces with a team of researchers working in the UWA Optical and Biomedical Engineering Laboratory (OBEL). The team consists of Professor David Sampson, Dr Robert McLaughlin and PhD candidate Loretta Scolaro.

The multidisciplinary team, lead by Dr McLaughlin, has been investigating the use of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to differentiate between cancerous and non-cancerous tissues, in particular lymph nodes, removed during surgical treatment for breast cancer.

In the same way that ultrasound uses sound waves to differentiate structures in the human body, OCT uses light to generate high resolution, three dimensional images.

The research group particularly focuses on the use of OCT for identification of cancerous tissue.

Cancer is known to spread through the lymphatic system and so it is common for breast surgery to involve the removal of some or all of the lymph nodes in the axilla (armpit). However, this can lead to often severe complications for patients.

There is no in vivo method available to identify lymph node involvement of cancer. This means that during procedures such as an axillary clearance, healthy, non-cancerous lymph nodes may be unnecessarily removed.

Exciting results of the OCT study have demonstrated that this type of optical imaging can differentiate between tissue types and show some microstructures in human lymph nodes. The next stage of the study will involve developing an OCT needle probe for in vivo assessment of lymph nodes and cancer in other sites of the body.

The investigators have recently been awarded a Novel Concept Award from the National Breast Cancer Foundation which will fund expansion of the study over the next two years.

- By Aimee Nichevich, Research Officer, School of Surgery