  Intraoperative assessment of tissue can be guided through fluorescence
imaging which involves systemic dosing with a fluorophore and subsequent
examination of the tissue region of interest with a near-infrared camera. This
typically involves administering indocyanine green (ICG) hours or even days
before surgery and intraoperative visualization at the time predicted for
steady-state signal-to-background status. Here, we describe our efforts to
capture and utilize the information contained in the first few minutes after
ICG administration from the perspective of both signal processing and surgical
practice. We prove a method for characterization of cancerous versus benign
rectal lesions now undergoing further development and validation via
multicenter clinical phase studies.
