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The goal of oncologic resection is to eradicate all malignant cells, while minimizing loss of surrounding normal tissue (or so-called “negative margins”). Failure to achieve negative margins constitutes an adverse prognostic factor, which has a significant impact on patient’s quality of life and cancer recurrence. Significant barriers to obtaining a negative margins resection in real time exist and novel imaging platforms are needed which can be utilized during robotic tumor resection. In order to develop a novel endoscopic imaging platform for head and neck surgery: We propose to combine functional measurement of molecular tissue constituents with lifetime molecular imaging of metabolism. This will couple traditional stereo laparoscopic images with Single Snapshot of Optical Properties (SSOP)/ Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging FLI NIR, and Phasor computational lifetime imaging technology (PHASOR) simultaneously into a dual channel robotic endoscope and tested via optical phantoms having realistic tissue properties. This platform will use a variety of techniques including to image endogenous molecular constituents, namely oxyhemoglobin, deoxyhemoglobin, water, NADH, and NADPH providing a quantitative measurement of physiological parameters. Such information can be used to identify healthy and diseased tissue intraoperatively, providing a unique opportunity to delineate surgical margins in real-time. Pre-clinical mice models bearing tumor xenografts will be imaged using the tri-modal system to record: visible light image, hemodynamics parameters and metabolic status and test the feasibility of the identification of tumor margins in real time.
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