Cancer patients have to endure many follow-up examinations to make sure all the tissue has been completely removed.
"In cancer surgery, you want to take out as little healthy tissue as possible, but you have to ensure that you remove all of the cancer.
"There is a real need for technology that can help the surgeon determine which tissue to cut out and which to leave in," said Lord Darzi who co-authored the study on the iKnife, which has been published in the journal "Science Transitional Medicine".
After the iKnife had been used to identify 302 tissue samples collected from cancer patients, it was then used in surgery.
It diagnosed cancerous tissue in 91 patients, with a success rate of 100 percent.
"These results provide compelling evidence that the iKnife can be applied in a wide range of cancer surgery procedures," Dr Takats said.
"It provides a result almost instantly, allowing surgeons to carry out procedures with a level of accuracy that hasn't been possible before. We believe it has the potential to reduce tumour recurrence rates and enable more patients to survive."
The iKnife presently costs £200,000, but it can drop significantly if produced on a commercial scale.
It is also able to identify tissue with an inadequate blood supply or certain types of bacteria, as well as being able to distinguish horse meat from beef.
