I would first like to congratulate Alexander Haddad et al. for their paper “Novel intra-operative strategies for enhancing tumour control: future directions”1; it is clear, informative, and concise. I note with interest a particular focus on novel intraoperative imaging techniques, including Raman spectroscopy (which is summarized excellently). However, I am slightly concerned that, if considering methods of intraoperative diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, why multispectral imaging/hyperspectral imaging (MSI/HSI) has not been included in this review? HSI has been shown to be a promising novel tool within the field of neuro-oncological surgery, providing a label-free, wide-field approach to tissue (and subsequently tumor) differentiation intraoperatively. Indeed, HSI capabilities have been demonstrated in the literature already2,3 and significant improvements on a design deemed difficult to integrate into the neurosurgical workflow have been achieved.4 Given the promising data available at the time of writing, I would urge the readership and reviewers to consider HSI/MSI within their scope of ‘future directions’ within the field.
Funding
No funding was received for any aspect of this work
Conflict of interest statement
The author is working as part of a research group investigating the use of hyperspectral imaging in neuro-oncology surgery to which this letter pertains, however, it is not felt that this is a significant conflict of interest to be declared
Author Contribution
The letter was written in its entirety by the author.
References
- 1. Haddad AF, Aghi MK, Butowski N.. Novel intraoperative strategies for enhancing tumor control: Future directions. Neuro-Oncology. 2022;24(Suppl_6):S25–S32. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
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