SpectraBREAST was prominently represented at the VISPEC 2026 Conference, held in Pavia, Italy, where members of the consortium actively contributed to the scientific program and outreach activities.
Carlo Morasso (ICS Maugeri, project coordinator) and Renzo Vanna (CNR, WP6 leader) co-chaired and organized a dedicated workshop supported by SpectraBREAST, focusing on advanced techniques in Raman spectroscopy and spectral data analysis for applications in breast cancer surgery. The session featured insights into emerging strategies for intraoperative tumor margin identification, including multimodal approaches combining Raman imaging with fluorescence or OCT.
Among the invited speakers was Prof. Ioan Notingher (University of Nottingham), a leading expert in the integration of Raman imaging with complementary techniques for real-time surgical guidance. Prof. Notingher presented ongoing clinical testing of such approaches in breast cancer margin detection.
The event saw strong participation from project partners, including researchers from ICS Maugeri, CNR, and Politecnico di Milano, with a total of four oral presentations and three posters related to biomedical applications of Raman spectroscopy, including a poster related to SpectraBREAST clinical data management.
In addition to the scientific sessions, Dr. Renzo Vanna contributed to the VISPEC “winter school”, delivering lectures during the first two and a half days. His sessions introduced students to preprocessing and analysis techniques for hyperspectral Raman data, including a hands-on demonstration of the RamApp—a free software tool for Raman data exploration.
The conference also welcomed international guests such as Prof. Jürgen Popp (Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, Jena) and other notable researchers, fostering valuable scientific exchange.
SpectraBREAST was pleased to contribute to this vibrant interdisciplinary forum and to share the project’s vision and progress with the wider spectroscopic imaging community.
