TAKUMI, the handheld magnetic probe by Matrix Cell Research Institute Inc., was developed under collaborative research with the University of Tokyo and a team of renowned surgeons, aiming to achieve an alternative to conventional radioisotope techniques; a device that is both user- and patient-friendly, portable, minimally invasive and can be utilized even by medical institutions lacking nuclear medicine facilities.
The study “Handheld magnetic probe with permanent magnet and Hall sensor for identifying sentinel lymph nodes in breast cancer patients” (M. Sekino, A. Kuwahata, T. Ookubo, M. Shiozawa, K. Ohashi, M. Kaneko, I. Saito, Y. Inoue, H. Ohsaki, H. Takei, and M. Kusakabe, Article number:1195 (2018), Scientific Reports 8) was published in January 2018 and details the prototype of TAKUMI as well as the results of the first clinical trials of sentinel lymph node biopsy using magnetic and blue dye tracers – without radioisotopes – demonstrating the magnetic probe’s effectiveness. The full article is freely accessible online and can be read here.