ABSTRACT
The prevalence and mortality rate of lung cancer are high. Comprehensive treatment with surgical involvement is the mainstream approach for treating early-stage lung cancer. Video-assisted thoracic surgery has been adopted as the standard minimally invasive surgical option in recent years. However, difficulties in distinguishing cancer tissue, localizing draining lymph node and identifying intersegmental planes make complete removal of cancer tissue challenging. In recent years, near-infrared fluorescence imaging has been integrated with video-assisted thoracic surgery and enjoys broad application prospects. Now it plays an important role in the localization of pulmonary nodules, marking of sentinel lymph nodes and discrimination of intersegmental planes during surgeries.
