Raman Spectroscopy Integrated Laparoscopic Probe for Intraoperative Margin Assessment of Gastrointestinal Malignancies

Intraoperative determination of tumor resection margins is critical to reducing positive margin rates and local recurrence of gastrointestinal cancers. Routine frozen-section pathology requires prolonged waiting time and is limited by sampling bias, which cannot deliver instantaneous feedback to surgeons during laparoscopic procedures. This research develops a compact Raman spectroscopy probe integrated into a laparoscopic instrument, enabling label-free, real-time biochemical discrimination between malignant, benign and normal gastrointestinal tissues. The optical probe is miniaturized to fit the working channel of standard laparoscopic trocars, with optimized optical paths to suppress autofluorescence interference from blood and tissue secretions. A machine learning classifier is trained on a dataset of paired Raman spectra and histopathological gold-standard results, achieving high sensitivity and specificity in distinguishing tumor-infiltrated margins. Ex-vivo human tissue testing confirms that the probe can complete margin evaluation within several seconds. The primary limitation lies in the penetration depth of the Raman signal, which restricts the detection range to superficial tissue layers. With further optimization, this optical laparoscopic probe can serve as an intraoperative auxiliary device to guide precise oncological resection.