Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and surgical tumor resection remains a cornerstone of therapy. In minimally invasive oncological surgery, precise identification of tumor margins is crucial to preserve healthy tissue while ensuring complete tumor removal. Currently, intraoperative assessment relies largely on histopathological analysis, which is time-consuming and does not provide immediate feedback during surgery.

The T-MIRACLE project aims to translate a minimally invasive Raman spectroscopic approach combined with AI-based real-time analysis into clinical application for intraoperative tumor margin assessment. The method enables reliable differentiation between tumor tissue and healthy tissue directly in the operating room and presents the results in an intuitive manner to support surgical decision-making. Preclinical studies and first clinical in vivo investigations in head and neck cancer patients have already demonstrated high diagnostic accuracy.

The objective of the project is to further develop and validate the real-time capability of the approach under clinical conditions, systematically compare the results with histopathological gold-standard diagnostics, and thereby establish a solid basis for regulatory translation into routine clinical practice.