Online symposium: Magnetic nanoparticles in laparoscopy

Laparoscopic surgery is an advancing field with opportunities for treatment of various clinical conditions including cancer. The importance of the lymph nodes to stratify cancer treatment is widely recognized. Additionally, the potential of a magnetic procedure to facilitate preoperative tumour staging, preoperative lymph node mapping, and intraoperative detection is emerging. This symposium will address the clinical and technical requirements necessary to advance the laparoscopic research technologies using magnetic nanoparticles to a clinical procedure. Therefore, this symposium focusses on: 
- Innovations in image-guided surgery for the laparoscopic setting
- Advances in lymph node dissection using magnetic nanoparticles

ORGANIZERS
MD&I is a clinically oriented department focusing on magnetic detection and imaging technologies (software and hardware) to facilitate personalized decision support towards a sustainable healthcare. Through innovative fundamental and applied research MD&I aims at developing diagnostics, assessment of treatment prediction, and clinical valorisations. Development of technologies at MD&I is patient centred and starts with requirements listed by clinicals, users and patients. The magnetic detection line within MD&I is focused on laboratory characterisation of superparamagnetic nanoparticles, preoperative nanoparticle-enhanced MRI lymphography, intraoperative detection of superparamagnetic nanoparticles in handheld and laparoscopic approach. Current clinical applications involve the following oncology cases: breast cancer, head and neck cancer, colorectal cancer, and prostate cancer. 

Lejla received her MSc degree in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology. She received her PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam within two graduate schools: advanced school for computing and imaging, and graduate school for molecular medicine. She is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Magnetic Detection & Imaging, University of Twente heading the clinical applications of magnetic particle detectors. She is affiliated with Imaging and Diagnostics cluster and TechMed centre. She has (co) authored over 30 publications (conference abstracts excluded) in the field of medical imaging, computer vision, and image-guided surgery.  

Bennie received his MSc degree in Applied Physics in 1990 at the University of Twente, and has completed his doctorate degree in 1994 on a thesis on applied superconductivity. In 2002 he became leader of a UT research group working on superconductivity for large scale applications. That year he spent 9 months in the physics group of John Clarke of the University of California. Currently, he is chair of the Magnetic Detection & Imaging group. An important research line of this group is on detecting magnetic particles in vivo that can be used to replace radio-isotopes, for example in the sentinel node procedure. For this purpose, in his group a novel technique of in vivo magnetic detection was developed and patented.

SPEAKERS