The iKnife, like its name suggests, is an “intelligent” knife designed for surgeons to test the health of a patient's tissue as they operate. The scapel was combined with smart sensor technology that can tell the surgeon whether the flesh they are cutting into has any degree of cancerous tumour. The iKnife provides this information instantly, cutting down the 30-minute waiting period required by conventional tissue scanning devices. Devised by researchers at Imperial College London, the intelligent knife was tested on 91 patients and returned a 100 per cent rate of accuracy in detecting harmful tumours. The study was published in the Science Translational Medicine journal. “With the iKnife, we’re able to analyze the individual components that make up different tissues and tell them apart,” Zoltán Takáts, PhD, creator of the device and a professor of analytical chemistry, explained in a statement. “So, in surgery, you would know exactly what type of tissue you're cutting through."