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 completed enrollment of the 80 cases. 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 completed the second phase of the project where we had clinicians interpret the images and videos of the surgical margins. We have found very good accuracy for detection of residual cancer at the surgical margins! We have been working on the next phase of this project will be continuing to collect data on these dogs and the outcome to help us understand the impact of using sensitive surgical margin imaging techniques for dogs with skin and subcutaneous tumors.
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.
Publications:
Cheng E, Jennings RN, Chen CL, Biggo MR, Erickson AK, Dornbusch JA, Linn SC, Lapsley J, Alva BM, Lorbach JN, Premanandan C, Selmic LE. Optical Coherence Tomography for Surgical Margin Evaluation of Excised Canine Cutaneous and Subcutaneous Tumors. Vet Comp Oncol. 2022 Jun 6. Doi: 10.1111/vco.12844.
