Yinthe Demeulemeester

In surgical oncology but also in wound management, clinicians face a fundamental challenge: they must remove all pathological and/or non-viable tissue while persevering as much healthy, functional tissue as possible. This balance is critical, since incomplete removal can lead to residual disease or impaired healing, whereas overly aggressive resection or debridement can unnecessarily damage viable tissue and compromise outcomes. At present, these decisions are still largely based on clinical judgment and visual assessment.

I investigate whether autofluorescence lifetime imaging (AF FLI) can be used as an objective, functional, tool for intraoperative decision-making.

My first and primary focus is wound management, where the aim is to differentiate between viable and non-viable tissue, distinguish infected from non-infected areas, and explore whether AF FL signatures can contribute to discriminating between bacteria types and tissue types relevant for debridement decisions.

My second focus is surgical oncology, where similar decision-making challenges arise in determining whether sufficient tumor tissue has been removed while preserving healthy surrounding tissue, particularly in the assessment of surgical margins.

Although these applications differ in context, they share the same underlying problem: real-time differentiation between tissue states to guide safe and effective surgical intervention. This overlap is further supported by the fact that oncological patients often present with impaired wound healing due to tumor-associated tissue alterations and the effects of oncological treatments, reinforcing the relevance of functional tissue assessment across both domains. This project therefore explores AF FLI as a unified functional imaging approach across wound healing and oncological surgery.
 

• Lab address: Soft Tissue Surgery, Small Animal Department, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University, Salisburylaan 133, entrance 20, B-9820 Merelbeke