IGF OT IGF SBIR PHASE II TOPIC OPTICAL BIOSENSOR FOR REAL TIME ASSESSMENT OF TUMOR CELLULARITY DURING CORE NEEDLE BIOPSY PROCEDURES

The long term goal of this program is to develop and translate to clinical use a novel technology that will help interventional radiologists to improve the success rate of the core needle biopsy procedures Although ultrasound or CT are used to identify tumor location and thus to guide biopsy needle insertion these technologies do not provide the necessary resolution to determine tumor cellularity It is known that many tumors are heterogeneous mixture of viable tumor necrosis fibrosis and inflammation and therefore interventional radiologists encounter serious challenges when performing biopsies due to the inability of collecting sufficient or adequate material for histological analysis As a result biopsy success varies within a large range from to depending on the physician skills tumor size and biopsy location