Capurting "surgical smoke"

When surgeons use electroscalpels, which cut and cauterize, puffs of smoke come off the tissue.  Professor Zoltán Takáts, at Justus Liebig University (Giessen, Germany) realized that the smoke actually was ionized material that might be fed directly into a mass spectrometer for analyzing the difference between normal and cancerous tissue based on differences of charge and mass (as a surgeon wants to know when clearing tumor margins). Takáts then designed a bipolar electroscalpel with a tube that directs the gas into a mass spec. It is unclear how close this is to commercial development.  MORE

Image Credit:  Zoltán Takáts and Technology Review