Crossing technological frontiers in radioguided intervention

Excerpt

Following its incorporation into the management of cutaneous melanoma and breast cancer, the sentinel node (SN) procedure has been the corner stone of radioguided surgery for the last 25 years [1]. Based upon the use of radioactive colloidal tracers administered at the tumour site and their prolonged SN retention, gamma probes were incorporated into the SN biopsy in the early years of the procedure [2]. These devices were not only able to count radioactivity in the surgical field, but also to provide audible signals proportional to the counting rate in the SNs. In fact, gamma probe counting constituted the acoustic component of the SN identification procedure in the operating room and was introduced to complement the process of visual detection of superficial lymphatic ducts and SNs using blue dyes, as implemented by surgeons. In the evolution of the procedure, this acoustic/visual approach meant a step forward in comparison with the original purely optical approach of Morton et al. [3]. …