Optical Guidance of Brain Therapies

It is estimated that approximately 17,000 malignant brain tumors are diagnosed in adults and 1,500 in children every year in the United States. Although primary brain tumors account for only 1.4% of all cancers, the 5-year survival rate of these patients (35%) is low. The most common initial therapy received by brain tumor patients is surgical resection. Many studies have shown that the degree of resection significantly influences the time to recurrence and the overall survival of brain tumor patients. Currently, surgical navigation systems and ultrasonography are used intraoperatively to help neurosurgeons locate brain tumor and maximize resection. Despite the applications of these technologies, significant residual tumor mass is often found to be left behind in patients following brain tumor resection. Hence, there is a need for an objective, intraoperative real-time system that is capable of accurately differentiating brain tumors from normal brain tissue, and detecting tumor margins with sub-millimeter spatial resolution.