Biopsy is a small surgical procedure to extract a living tissue from your body for medical testing for suspected diseases such as cancer. There is several different type of biopsy, and each one of them has its own technique. But what brought my attention today is a new robot surgeon that successfully found and guided a needle to a sliver of steel shrapnel, completely without human help.

According to Duke University where the experiment was performed, this new technology will reduce the cost of Biopsy and reduce the time as well.

“Eventually you could have a ten-dollar biopsy done inside in a supermarket” said Steve Smith, a doctor at Duke University and co-author of a paper describing the work in the journal IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control. Discovery Channel Report

The new robot has the capability to find small tiny shrapnel that didn’t even appear on the ultrasound. To make it larger, the scientist used high-powered magnetic field to vibrate the silver. All that was left was for the needle to reach out and touch the tiny metal piece.

Doctors and scientists are expecting to have this robot in reach within two years, to start saving lives immediately.