Sachin Jagdale, EH News Bureau
Molecular imaging, particularly optical imaging has begun to get recognition in the field of image-guided surgery. This form of interoperative florescence imaging will minimise errors during surgery, protecting vital tissues like nerves from inadvertent damage during surgery. Dr Rao Papineni, an Indian origin scientist from Carestream Health Inc, US, has teamed up with a few research groups at Baylor College of Medicine; to identify and evaluate near-IR fluorescence bound plant lectin as a suitable candidate for a surgical nerve contrast molecular probe.
Papineni informs, “This particular lectin is originally from wheat. Dr Scott Wellnitz, a post-doc had screened several of these sugar binding plant lectins from lentils, legumes, and cereals during the process of identification.” Other investigators are Dr Steen Pedersen, Dr Pautler of Baylor College of Medicine and Dr Daniel Kim, a neurosurgeon at University of Texas.
Papineni suggested stringent assessment on toxicity issues and other side-effects, before the suregeons used such a spray in clinics to distinguish nerve endings during surgical procedures. These optical-image guided surgical techniques are expected to gives best outcome for the patients through protection of vital organs.
EH News Bureau