Editorial Front. Oncol., State-Of-The-Art Fluorescence Image-Guided Surgery: Current and Future Developments, by John R. Benson (Cambridge, UK), Fijs W. B. van Leeuwen (Leiden, Netherlands) and Tomoharu Sugie (Hiratata, Japan)

Fluorescent-guided surgery (FGS) is an intra-operative imaging modality with a potentially broad application and range of clinical utility. It provides an additional visual dimension to white light and represents an extension of pre-operative radiological investigations with real-time imaging during an operation (open or minimally invasive procedure). The main clinical usage relates to lymphatic mapping or evaluation of blood flow in the context of tissue perfusion. In addition, FGS has shown promise as a method for more accurately localizing and delineating solid tumors and detecting smaller impalpable tumor foci not evident pre-operatively or visualized with conventional white light-based technologies at the time of surgery.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fonc.2021.776832/full