Robot-Assisted Breast Cancer Surgery

Breast cancer affects 1 in 8 women during their lives and is the second-leading cause of female cancer related deaths. The ideal treatment is breast-conservation surgery during its early stage to remove the cancer while conserving healthy parts of the breast. With current resection methods, on average, one out of every three women undergoing breast-conservation surgery needs at least one additional surgery to remove residual tumor that is left behind. Repeat surgery often leads to full mastectomy among other complications, which is a traumatic experience for a patient who expected a curative treatment with breast-conservation. As early stage breast cancer is not palpable or visible, surgeons tend to apply generous “safety margins” around the target tumor and remove a great deal of healthy breast tissue which can lead to more severe breast deformity. We propose integrative development of a unique robotic surgical navigation system, featuring a multimodal image-guided surgical robot to achieve precise resection of the target. Our project seeks to ensure complete resection of the tumor while also reducing the amount of healthy breast tissue removed, thus yielding significant quality of life benefits to patients and a reduction in health care costs.

Faculty Supervisor:

Gabor Fichtinger

Student:

Partner:

Johns Hopkins University

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Biotechnology; Information and Communications Technology

University:

Queen's University

Program: