The EPIC Meeting on Photonics for Cancer Diagnostics and Treatment at NKI was focused on making another step towards closure of the existing gap between unmet medical needs and innovative industrial solutions.
It is clear that there is a need for the paradigm shift from treatment towards preserving healthy state as well as avoiding overtreatment as much as undertreatment. Many medical fields could benefit from novel technologies, including pathology, radiology, dermatology, etc. Photonics has one of the best potentials to make a real change and during this meeting it was discussed how it can be achieved.
State-of-the-art technological advantages focusing on the minimal invasive diagnostic tools as well and interoperative tumor margin assessment such as Hyperspectral and Diffuse reflectance imaging, Raman spectroscopy, OCT, fluorescence imaging, etc. were discussed alongside with novel developments of various optical components and systems enabling the use of this technics on the real clinical setting.