Chemical fingerprints of tissue samples taken from patients during operations could soon help surgeons to decide quickly where to make their incisions. Nature News has reported that two groups are leading efforts to use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to analyse the metabolites in biopsies and relay information back to theatre within minutes.

A team at Imperial College London is planning to install a £300,000 NMR spectrometer that can study solid samples into a surgical unit in February. The machine will be fitted with a robot to rapidly load samples and which allows the needles used for biopsies to go directly into the spectrometer. It's the first step in an ambitious programme that could later see the instruments rolled out into intensive care and other wards in hospitals affiliated to the university.

Currently, it takes around 40 minutes for a senior histopathologist to cut, stain and mount a sample, before examining the tissue under a microscope to see if it's cancerous. "What we we'd like to be able to do is cut that in half and possibly in quarter," says one of the lead academics, Jeremy Nicholson.

A second team in Strasbourg is hoping to use their own NMR machine, installed in Hautepierre hospital in 2007, to analyse colon and kidney samples. Starting next year, the machine will provide surgeons with information about whether they have successfully removed cancers from patients on the operating table.

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