Project description
Optical techniques to improve breast-conserving surgery
Breast-conserving surgery (a lumpectomy) is meant to remove the cancer while leaving as much of the breast as possible. Defining the tumour margin to ensure the cancer is completely removed is currently done primarily post-operatively, resulting in approximately one in five patients requiring a second surgery. Funded by the European Innovation Council, the Spectra-BREAST project aims to revolutionise breast-conserving surgery by providing a tool to assess tumour margins during surgery with over 95 % accuracy and in under five minutes. Combining hyperspectral imaging, Raman spectroscopy and AI, it will identify cancerous tissue up to two millimetres deep, improving patient outcomes, reducing healthcare costs and enabling broader applications in other cancer surgeries and biopsies.
Objective
The Spectra-BREAST project aims to revolutionize the assessment of tumor resection margins during breast conserving surgery (BCS). Currently, approximately 20% of breast cancer patients require a second operation due to incomplete removal of cancerous tissue. This results in increased costs for the healthcare system and significant negative effects on patients’ well-being.
Nowadays, the standard margin assessment procedure is postoperative histopathological specimen analysis, which takes several days to complete. Although intraoperative histopathological analysis on frozen tissue is possible, it is less effective and cannot be implemented in all clinical centers. Alternative techniques have been suggested but have low diagnostic performance or take excessive time to assess the entire resected specimen.
Spectra-BREAST aims to support surgeons with an intraoperative tool providing accurate and actionable feedback on the resection margin status over the whole specimen in less than 5 minutes. To this end, we will apply a radically new, high-risk multimodal approach combining two optical techniques, Hyperspectral Imaging (HSI) and fiber-optic Raman Spectroscopy (RS) with AI-based data-analysis. HSI and AI will be used for fast and sensitive detection of suspicious margins, which are subsequently analyzed by RS, and a second AI will make the final prediction on the RS spectra. The ambition is to identify tumors on and below the resection surface (up to a depth of 2 mm), with an unprecedented high sensitivity and specificity (over 95%) in real-time. Spectra-BREAST also has the potential for wider applications, going beyond breast cancer to include margin assessment for other cancers, robotic/laparoscopic surgery, and guided biopsy. Finally, Spectra-BREAST will offer an objective technology reducing variability between patients, and most importantly, will improve patient outcomes such as reduced hospital stays, complications, anxiety, and improved cosmetic outcomes.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine surgery
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine oncology
- natural sciences physical sciences optics spectroscopy
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIC-2024-PATHFINDEROPEN-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
27100 Pavia
Italy
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