Thank you for supporting our project titled “Optical coherence tomography for margin evaluation of skin and subcutaneous neoplasms”. This project is investigating an emerging diagnostic imaging tool, optical coherence tomography that uses light waves to generate real time high-resolution images of tissues for detection of residual cancer cells immediately following surgical removal. Our team involves collaboration between veterinary medicine and pathology at the Ohio State University. We have had excellent progress in our patient enrollment, we completed enrollment of the 80 cases planned already! We completed the first phase of this project where we are looking at imaging skin tumors after surgical removal in dogs. In this first phase we performed initial comparisons between the images from optical coherence tomography with biopsy slides of these areas. This phase allowed us to identify features of the tissues and helped to train our imaging operators for the second phase of the project.
To date, our assessments have been encouraging and we are seeing correlation between optical coherence tomography imaging features seen and biopsy results in the second phase of our study. We are currently evaluating the images and preparing the training and test sets of images for observers to assess. The next phase of the project will involve the observers looking at these images for evidence of residual cancer.
We are very grateful for your support. Our team will continue to work hard to perform the evaluation of this cutting-edge and promising technology for detection of residual cancer cells following surgery. Advancement of our knowledge of residual cancer cells at the time of surgery will help to improve options and outcome for dogs.
End-Year-1 Research Update Dr. Selmic early margin evaluation with skin cancer surgery.
