Stimulated Raman Histology for Rapid Intraoperative Diagnosis of Central Nervous System Tumors

Stimulated Raman histology (SRH) is an ex-vivo optical imaging method that enables the microscopic examination of fresh tissue intraoperatively. SRH imaging allows rapid microscopic imaging, avoids tissue loss, and enables remote telepathology review. Our guest, Dr. Matija Snuderl from New York University Langone Health, New York, discusses his team’s recent blinded, retrospective two-arm telepathology study on clinical validation of SRH for rapid intraoperative diagnosis of central nervous system tumors.

All SRH images were of sufficient quality and showed high accuracy in distinguishing glial from nonglial tumors (96.5% SRH vs 98% whole slide images) and predicting final diagnosis (85.9% SRH vs 93.1% whole slide images). The median turnaround time for prospectively SRH-rendered diagnosis was 3.7 minutes, 10-fold shorter than the median for frozen sections.