About This Webinar
Surgery is a common treatment for cancer in dogs and cats, with complete tumor removal linked to lower recurrence and better survival outcomes. Traditionally, post-operative histopathology is used to assess surgical margins, but this method is slow and limited to small tissue samples. Polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) offers a real-time, noninvasive alternative for evaluating surgical margins during procedures. Our clinical trials in dogs and cats with skin tumors — including soft tissue sarcomas, mast cell tumors, and mammary tumors — demonstrate that PS-OCT provides high sensitivity and specificity in detecting incomplete tumor removal. PS-OCT effectively distinguishes tumor tissue from surrounding structures such as muscle, fat, and skin. Real-time imaging enables immediate surgical intervention when margins are incomplete, potentially reducing the need for additional treatments, lowering patient morbidity, and easing financial burdens for pet owners.
Who should attend:
This session is ideal for professionals involved in photonics research, optical imaging, biomedical engineering, and the development of advanced diagnostic and surgical guidance technologies. It will be particularly relevant to those working with OCT and other imaging modalities, biophotonics platforms, diagnostic instrumentation, and clinical translation of optical devices. Individuals from product development, R&D, and industry leadership who are interested in expanding the role of photonics in real-time, noninvasive medical and veterinary applications will find this session especially valuable.
About the presenter:
Dr. Laura Selmic earned her veterinary degree from the Royal Veterinary College (RVC), University of London, in 2004, where she also completed a small animal rotating internship. She then pursued residency in small animal surgery at Texas A&M University, followed by a surgical oncology fellowship at Colorado State University in 2011. Selmic also earned a master's in public health with a focus on applied biostatistics in 2013. She served as an assistant professor of small animal soft tissue and oncologic surgery at the University of Illinois. In 2018, she joined Ohio State University, where she is part of the integrated oncology and surgery teams as a surgical oncologist. Her research focuses on intraoperative imaging for detecting residual cancer, cancer epidemiology, and treatment outcomes. She leads ongoing clinical trials evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of optical coherence tomography (OCT) for real-time surgical margin assessment.
About the sponsor:
Thorlabs is a vertically integrated designer and manufacturer of photonics equipment for research, industry, life science, biomedical, and defense applications. Offerings include optomechanics, motion control, optics, fiber and fiber processing systems, light analysis, lasers and SLDs, optical amplifiers, imaging components, and microscopy systems.