Performing surgery to remove a brain tumor requires surgeons to walk a very fine line. If they leave tumor tissue behind, the tumor is likely to regrow; if they cut out too much normal tissue, they could cause permanent brain damage. “Primary brain tumors look just like brain tissue,” says Keith Paulsen, PhD, a professor of biomedical engineering at Thayer School of Engineering and a member of the Cancer Imaging and Radiobiology Research Program at Norris Cotton Cancer Center. “But if you look at them under a particular kind of light, they look much different.”
