2016 Volume 54Annual Issue 27PM-Abstract Pages S247
Nerve-sparing surgery is an essential surgical technique for sustaining the quality of life of patients after surgical treatment. However, frequent disablement of patients after treated with nerve-sparing surgery occurs. At the moment, nerve detection relies on the visual inspection by a surgeon, frequently resulting in undesirable damage of thin peripheral nerve with the diameter of 1 mm or less. Here we present a label-free, non-destructive imaging system that can discriminate such a thin peripheral nerve from adjacent tissues. Raman imaging endoscopic probe with 32 detection points at the sample plane has been developed. Rat ex vivo peripheral nerve with the diameter of 1 mm or less has been successfully discriminated from ex vivo muscle and connective tissues. The accuracy of nerve accuracy was higher than 90%. The measurement time was 5 sec. Our developed probe is a promising basis of a peripheral nerve detection system for nerve sparing surgery.
