Texas A&M Develops New Nerve Detection Technologies To Aid Surgeries
Nanoparticles smaller than skin and blood cells could be the key to mapping nerve systems and preventing injuries during surgery.
During life-saving operations, surgeons often rely on visual skills and anatomical knowledge to avoid cutting critical nerves, which can be as thin as a strand of hair and hidden within tissue.
Three students from the Texas A&M University School of Engineering Medicine (EnMed) are working to develop a new technology that would allow surgeons to visualize a real-time map of a patient’s nerves, significantly lowering the risk of nerve injuries during surgeries.
Grace Gasper, Cooper Lueck and Tristen Slamowitz are three EnMed fourth year medical students who recently won a $100,000 Advancing Discovery to Market Award (ADM) grant for their nerve detection project. Alongside Dr. Paul Derry from the Institute of Biosciences and Technology, the team is developing a new technique that utilizes nanoparticles, nearly one thousandth the size of cells, which bind specifically to nerve tissue and can be detected using MRI technology or magnetic probes. Surgeons could then use this technology to avoid nerve injury intraoperatively or locate them for harvesting.
A nerve injury during surgery can have critical consequences for patients. Nearly 2.4 million nerve injuries happen each year, and neural tissue is one of the slowest growing tissues in the body at one millimeter per day.
“If you transect a nerve, even if you suture it immediately afterwards, the distal portion of that nerve is going to die and that nerve is going to have to regrow,” Gasper said. “Sometimes, from that accident, you can see chronic pain or loss of feeling. It’s overall a very traumatic and detrimental experience for the patient.”
The nanoparticles will be manually injected into a patient and, due to the specific peptide used, will selectively bind to peripheral nerves.
“These are iron oxide nanoparticles. They have a magnetic dipole that can be detected by highly sensitive scanners,” Lueck said. “We can use a sensitive magnetic probe, scanning for nerves as we go through layers of tissue and figure out where the nerves are so we can harvest or avoid them.”
Currently, there are few widely available options for intraoperative peripheral nerve detection. The team’s current design keeps feasibility and accessibility in mind.
“Our probe, based on past data, should be able to detect at 1.5 to 2 centimeters distance. There is more research going into nerve detection now, like with fluorescent nerve detection, but the main difference is the magnetic particles would allow a much greater depth of detection,” Gasper explained. “We have all the theoretical data from past researchers’ data on these topics to prove the foundations are there, but we’ll be putting it all together and showing that it actually works.”
Slamowitz, who just completed a rotation in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit at Houston Methodist, points to one example where nerve mapping could greatly help surgeons: invasive chest procedures like open-heart surgeries.
“The phrenic nerve runs very close to the heart and controls the diaphragm, which functions to help a person breathe. Being able to map the phrenic nerve could be essential when performing cardiac surgery and could prevent some very serious complications,” Slamowitz said. “This example is very specific to complications we see in the CVICU, but the technology is applicable for a variety of surgical procedures.”
With the $100,000 ADM grant, the team has begun to execute on their proposed research plan, which spans two-years, from synthesizing the particles and manufacturing the probe to further testing.
“I think our technology will revolutionize surgeries and make imaging nerves more accessible,” Lueck said. “There are certain types of protocols you can use for MRI to detect nerves specifically, but they take more time and require specialized studies for the physicists and the radiologists. If we make it easier and quicker, we save time, we save staff, we can do more surgeries in a given day and everyone wins.”
