Researchers at the Imperial School of London have come up a new surgical knife that can isolate cancer tissue based on how the tissue smells when heated.

If this sounds weird, it is a little far-fetched but can be an invaluable tool to surgeons who are unsure about differentiating malignant and benign tissue. This can spell survival for some patients with cancer since a recurrence of the disease is associated with not having removed all the cancer cells.

The most common procedure for treating cancers is surgery. And this presents a challenge for surgeons and oncologists because malignancies require additional treatment modalities like chemotherapy and radiation.

Dr Emma King, cancer surgeon at Cancer Research U.K., commented "(The new knife) looks fabulous," reported Fox News.

She added that "it makes sense to look at the (information on the knife) more carefully" since it has broken bits of tumor cells on it.

The surgical tool dubbed iKnife is going though its early testing phase in clinical trials and proves to be a revolutionary breakthrough for treating cancer patients, reports BBC.

This is particularly useful for brain tumor surgery since malignant cells in brain tissue invade normal cells rapidly.

The researchers said the knife functions by sending signals from the smoke used to burn cancer tissue to a spectrometer that measures the particles in the smoke.

This data can be compared to other control samples to determine the stage of cancer. For instance, a green indicator would mean that the tissue is benign, while a red signal would point to the presence of cancer cells and a yellow light would mean that the tissue is indistinguishable.