Context: In a new research led by the Imperial College of London has recently found an intelligent knife (iKnife), which can be used to diagnose womb cancer within minutes.

Need

• According to the World Cancer Research Fund International, womb or endometrial cancer is the 6th most commonly occurring cancer among people with uteruses.

• In India, at least 26,000 cases of endometrial cancer were recorded in 2020, while in the U.K., where the study was held, around 9,700 cases were recorded every year.

How it works

• The knife uses electric currents on biopsy tissue and then analyses the vapourised aerosols from the tissue in a mass spectrometer to give real-time information about activity in the tissue.

• The study noted that the knife reliably diagnosed endometrial cancer in tissue within seconds with an accuracy of 89%. This would greatly minimise the delays faced by patients who wait for a normal histopathological diagnosis.