Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Canadian men. 26,500 Canadian men are likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012 and 4000 are likely to die from it. The main treatment for prostate cancer is laparoscopic prostate removal or robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostate removal. The da Vinci surgical robot accounts for 85% of laparoscopic prostate removals in the USA and it is also used for other surgeries like removal of kidney tumours. About half of patients lose their sexual function and 1/10th lose bladder control after the prostate removal surgery. These unintended surgical outcomes are partly because surgeons have poor real-time surgical imaging technology and cannot always clearly see the tumours below the tissue surface. I propose to create a new surgical imaging technology for the da Vinci surgical robot which will allow the surgeon to see the tumours. The technology will improve surgical navigation and I will test to see if it improves patient outcomes. The imaging technology includes a new way of imaging tumours during the surgery and a new way of showing the image to the surgeons. The new way of imaging tumours is based on imaging tissue stiffness. Tissue stiffness is important because tumours and healthy tissue generally have a different stiffness. The images will be shown to the surgeon using special computer graphics. The images will be accurately placed onto the surgeon's screen in the location they were captured. This means that the surgeon will only need one screen and will have a better idea of where he/she needs to cut. This work will be completed in the next three years.