Tissue Discrimination-The Next Frontier in Robotic Surgery?

The current state of the art robotic surgical systems allow surgeons to accurately, pre-operatively, localise disease and extent, and intra-operatively to improve access and vision. They have not yet enabled the surgeon to determine tissue interfaces, which would allow the precise removal of disease without the need to rely on vision or human touch. There is a great need for smart surgical tools to aid discrimination of tissue types within the body. The ability to determine diseased from disease free tissue would allow surgeons to limit their operations to the disease entities, and allow improved functionality of surrounding structures.