Postes Ingénieur

Full-field multispectral Mueller polarimetric imaging for improved surgery of neurological malignancies

Description: Surgery is the crucial step in the treatment of brain tumors, in particular gliomas. While some well-defined tumors, such as metastases, can be removed en bloc, the majority of gliomas, which tend to grow infiltratively in the white matter of brain, are removed in piecemeal. During the surgery, it is essential to identify and respect the boundary between brain tumor and surrounding healthy brain tissue in order to carry out a radical resection of the pathological parts while preserving neurological function. However, solid tumor tissue is often difficult to differentiate from infiltrated white matter during surgery, even using a state-of-the-art intraoperative microscope. A non-complete tumor resection due to poor visualization of tumor margins leads to a worse prognosis for the patients, as the tumors invariably grow back from the remnants. Several imaging techniques (e.g. fluorescence imaging, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging) have been implemented for the intraoperative vizualization of brain tumors tissue, but all have some drawbacks. In summary, the efforts to visualize brain tumor and reliably identify the interface between healthy and pathological areas during neurosurgery have so far failed for many intrinsic brain tumors. Read more

Work location:
Laboratoire de Physique des Interfaces et des Couches Minces
Ecole polytechnique
Route de Saclay
91128 Palaiseau
France

Contact: Angelo Pierangelo (angelo.pierangelo@polytechnque.edu), Tatiana Novikova (tatiana.novikova@polytechnique.edu)