research process - How to formulate in academic writing when one comes up with a novel approach

In my project work I came up with a new method for solving a certain problem which has not been used before, by extending an already existing approach.

What type of wording should I use in academic writing to express this fact.

I wrote something in the lines of, but would like to have something more elegant:

Furthermore, in my project work I propose a novel approach by extending X and incorporating an xyz mechanism to it in order to get better Z metric

EDIT:

I would also like to say, that "something similar has never been done before to our knowledge"

Answer

Given that you are sure of novelty of your work, you can write something like: " to the best of our knowledge, the proposed approach is the first to do...." and show the novelty in your approach.