A surgical system used to determine the presence of a vessel within a region (102) proximate to a working end (104) of a surgical instrument (106) includes at least one light emitter (110) disposed at the working end (104) of the surgical instrument (106), and at least one light sensor (112) disposed at the working end (104) of the surgical instrument (106) and configured to receive light emitted from the at least one light emitter (110) and reflected from the region (102), the at least one light sensor (112) adapted to generate a signal comprising a first pulsatile component and a second non-pulsatile component. The system also includes a controller (114) coupled to the at least one light sensor (112), the controller (114) comprising a splitter (116) to separate the first pulsatile component from the second non-pulsatile component and an analyzer (118) to determine the presence of the vessel within the region (102) proximate to the working end (104) of the surgical instrument (106) based on the first pulsatile component.