April 1, 2024

Faster recovery, reduced hospital stays, and a quicker return to normal activities are the most evident advantages of laparoscopic surgery. More than 13 million laparoscopic procedures are performed every year. Laparoscopic surgery has become the technique of choice for virtually every kind of abdominal surgery. Robot‐assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy is the most common surgical approach performed for prostate cancer. The NIH project will allow the investigators to develop an advanced hyperspectral imaging system for robotics assisted laparoscopic surgery. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) provides not only high‐resolution spatial images but also spectral data at each pixel. Both spectral and spatial information can be used to identify various types of tissues including malignant tumors. The utilization of quantitative hyperspectral imaging for robot‐assisted laparoscopic surgery represents a major innovation in minimally invasive surgery with the aim of improving surgical outcomes.