SamanTree Medical, a medical technology company driven to support clinicians with their intraoperative decisions and improve cancer surgery outcomes, announced today the publication of clinical data in prostate cancer, expanding the potential clinical utility of its proprietary medical imaging platform, the Histolog Scanner.
Morphological information is the gold standard guidance for clinicians in cancer surgery allowing the visualization of microscopic cancer lesions, however, the time required to get the results is a limiting factor to its widespread and routine use (Dobbs et al., 2013; Elfgen et al., 2019). Accurate intraoperative assessment is especially important in prostate cancer, where nerve-sparing surgery can avoid impotency and urinary incontinency that may affect many of the patients (Dinneen et al., 2019). Such surgery implies however leaving nerves surrounding the prostate intact while removing as much cancer as possible, representing a potential site for recurrences if cancer has invaded them.
The Enclosure Study was conducted at Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital (Netherlands), under the supervision of Professor Diederik Somford and Dr. Willem Vreuls. The study evaluated the Histolog Scanner as an alternative to NeuroSAFE. "Surgeons are most of the time guided with preoperative MRI, which does not enable cellular visualization of the nerve-adjacent areas of the prostate, resulting in 20-40% positive margins found by final pathology examination following surgery. The current best practice to avoid the risk of positive margins is to perform frozen sections of the nerve-adjacent structures of the prostate, a procedure called NeuroSAFE. This procedure requires time and resources, limiting its standardization amongst hospitals. Enclosure study shows the relevance of the information provided by the Histolog Scanner resulting in similar performance to NeuroSAFE procedure, however with 80% time reduction", explained Dr. Willem Vreuls.
Charles S. Carignan, MD, SamanTree Medical Chairman commented, "as already announced in our previous press release, the Histolog Scanner is a multi-purpose imaging platform compatible with multiple clinical routine, for faster and safer oncological treatment. With its large field of view and high resolution, the Histolog Scanner provides a unique opportunity to standardize intraoperative assessment in indications where morphologic information cannot be obtained in a time-efficient, cost-effective manner, such as prostate. The numbers speak for themselves; the Histolog Scanner was shown to provide the gold standard information in 5 minutes instead of 45. In cases where frozen sections are performed as intraoperative assessment, the Histolog Scanner provides surgeons and pathologists with a faster communication channel while keeping the microscopic resolution. Another demonstration of that will be published early 2023 with the utilization of our platform in brain cancer."
A few words on brain cancer:
Earlier this month at the congress Digital Pathology AI, the medical team from Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust (UK), presented promising results showing that the Histolog Scanner enabled the assessment of brain tissue with 100% agreement with frozen section analysis, but again with drastic time reduction. Additional details from this study will be published soon.
About SamanTree Medical
SamanTree Medical has developed a breakthrough medical imaging modality that enables new medical procedures with the will to improve cancer treatment. The Histolog Scanner is a CE mark product since 2016 for high resolution imaging of the surface of fresh tissue. It is based on a novel ultra-fast confocal microscopy technology invented in EPFL in 2010. This innovation finds its application along the patient journey, from biopsy taking to surgical diagnostics.
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About Histolog Scanner
The Histolog Scanner (CE mark in 2018) provides a breakthrough innovation for enhanced intraoperative guidance. This new imaging modality offers clinicians the real-time ability to assess fresh tissue; the clinician is one touch-on-the-screen away from visualizing cancerous cells immediately during surgery. It covers a broad range of surgical and diagnostic applications in oncology. The Histolog Scanner is an investigational device in the US.
Dinneen, E., Haider, A., Allen, C., Freeman, A., Briggs, T., Nathan, S., Brew-Graves, C., Grierson, J., Williams, N. R., Persad, R., Oakley, N., Adshead, J. M., Huland, H., Haese, A., Shaw, G. (2019). NeuroSAFE robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy versus standard robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy for men with localised prostate cancer (NeuroSAFE PROOF): Protocol for a randomised controlled feasibility study. BMJ Open, 9(6), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-028132
Dobbs, J. L., Ding, H., Benveniste, A. P., Kuerer, H. M., Krishnamurthy, S., Yang, W., Richards-Kortum, R. (2013). Feasibility of confocal fluorescence microscopy for real-time evaluation of neoplasia in fresh human breast tissue. Journal of Biomedical Optics, 18(10), 106016. https://doi.org/10.1117/1.jbo.18.10.106016
Elfgen, C., Papassotiropoulos, B., Varga, Z., Moskovszky, L., Nap, M., Güth, U., Baege, A., Amann, E., Chiesa, F., Tausch, C. (2019). Comparative analysis of confocal microscopy on fresh breast core needle biopsies and conventional histology (Diagn Pathol (2019) 14:58 DOI: 10.1186/s13000-019-0835-z). Diagnostic Pathology, 14(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13000-019-0861-x
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