British scientists have designed a new way to identify the malignant spread of breast cancer using diamonds.

When cancer spreads, its first attitude is often the close lymph nodes. Doctors usually use radioactive traces or fluorescent pigments to make cancer cells visible and to determine to what extent the disease has metastasized.

But these approaches have some disadvantages: some patients are allergic to pigments and some hospitals are not equipped for the additional precautions required during the handling of radioactive materials, the Euronews notes.

Now, the researchers have built a new type of sensor that says it offers a non -toxic and non -radioactive alternative.

During or before surgery for breast cancer, doctors said they could inject a magnetic fluid into a patient’s tumor. The liquid then travels to the lymph nodes, along with metastatic cancer cells.

To identify the liquid and determine which lymph nodes should be surgically removed, doctors would be based on a magnetic field sensor with a tiny diamond at the edge, the researchers said. Diamonds have nitrogen gap centers or color centers, which can detect magnetic fields.

These color centers “allow the diamond to detect very small changes in the magnetic field and give diamonds a wonderful pink color,” said Gavin Morley, one of the authors of the study and physics professor at Warwick University.

Morley’s team reduced the edge of the sensor to just 10mm, making it the first diamond sensor, while at the same time being small enough to use in surgery.

The researchers published their findings in Physical Review Applied. They did not reveal any funding from Endomagnetics Ltd, which manufactures the magnetic traceer they used.

Dr. Stuart Robertson, Breast Cancer Surgeon in England, said that magnetic sensors are now used regularly to determine if breast cancer has spread.

The new approach, he said, could help “further optimize magnetic technology”.