Microwave Breast Tomography

Human Health Care industry is rising star of XXI century, according the authorities, will be second largest sector in the world, during the next quarter. Medical Devices are most important portion (%20-25) of that sector and becoming much more popular day by day for investors.

Cancer diagnosis devices make a large portion of this healthcare market. Early diagnosis of cancer is utmost importance and unfortunately the existing solutions on the market have such tremendous harms on the human body as they mostly use harmful x-ray that there are even academic studies that claim that some devices even increase the probability of the cancer.

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women and has the highest incidence of cancer in women. 1 in 8 women is going to diagnosed by breast cancer within her life span. In 2012, it reached 12.5% of women worldwide. The number of patients who were diagnosed with breast cancer was about 1.7 million worldwide only in 2012.

The Survival rate for a Stage 4 diagnosis is %63.2. However, if breast cancer is detected early enough, the survival rate improves drastically, It is over 98.8% for stage 2 diagnosis.

Thus, regular checkups and early detection of breast cancer are crucial to save lives. (www.cancerresearchuk.org)

Current techniques for breast imaging are X-ray mammography, ultrasound and MRI.

· X-ray mammography uses X-rays to create images of the breast. It is commonly used for early breast cancer diagnosis. However, it has a number of shortcomings such as it risks exposure to radiation. The results of mammography revealed 1,212 of 10,000 women screened turn out to be false positives in their 40s. Harmful effects of mammography include overtreatment, unnecessary, and sometimes invasive follow-up testing and psychological harm associated with false positive test results. Mammography can be usable only for women above 40 years old. Further, X-ray mammography needs compression of the breast “squeezing” to lie as flat as possible during the examination, which causes patient pain. It is difficult to distinguish tumors in dense breast mammogram images, because both dense tissue and cancer appear white in the mammogram image, unlike fatty tissue that appears black. Other breast screening methods are adjuncts to mammography.

· Ultrasound uses sound waves to see internal body structure. A transducer placed on the skin sends ultrasound pulses into the body and detects the echoes from inside the body, which are used to make ultrasound images. This is a painless method that is safe from radiation exposure. However, ultrasound has low resolution and does not distinguish between malignant and benign. Additionally, ultrasound is mostly used as a secondary technique, after a mammogram result shows a suspected mass.

· MRI uses radio waves and strong magnetic fields to make images of the inside body. This method utilizes the amount of absorption energy of different type of tissues. When used with soft tissue like breast, contrast chemical liquid is injected to provide better images. MRI is typically used for further evaluation of questionable findings. Moreover, MRI is used for screening evaluation before surgical approach, for example, breast-conserving lumpectomy to mastectomy. However, MRI screening costs are so high that it is not suitable as an early detection screening method.

Such limitations of existing breast diagnostic imaging methods motivate the research to develop alternative imaging methods. Microwave breast imaging, which is noninvasive and harmless to human, offers a promising alternative method to mammography. Microwave imaging uses the scattering wave or reflected wave that arises from the contrast in dielectric properties between normal and malignant breast tissues.

The general objective of our device is to provide a high precision diagnostic and therapeutic tool that will allow the effective and harmless diagnosis of breast cancer. It can be performed as many times as desired as it doesn’t have any harmful effect on the body. It can even be used on pregnant women. Since compressing the breasts, which is the method used in existing devices, is no longer required, it is not a painful process. Moreover, it does not fail to detect the tumors that are close to the rib cage.

The specific technical objectives of our device MBT can be stated as following;

To generate breast image without using harmful ionizing X-ray radiation.

the current state of the art is mammogram and mammogram uses X-rays to image the breast which themselves may cause cancer, that is why it is not advisable to use more than once in a year.

To be a Breast cancer diagnosis device suitable to use for females on all ages.

Mammogram can’t be used women younger than 40 years old. In order to increase the early detection chance and so survival rate, there is a need to test the women as young as possible.

To remove the test usage frequency limitations so that high breast cancer risk females can be monitored even monthly if needed.
Genetic heritage is an important factor to increase the breast cancer. The individuals having that risk should be tested more often than normal. However, mammogram is even dangerous for those people to use for testing since their risk to generate cancer is more than the normal statistics. They should be monitored more often, like once in a two to three months.

To distinguish tumors in the breast are malign (cancerous) or benign.

The differentiation of malign and benign tumors is very weak in Ultrasound, MRI and even Mammogram. MBT uses electromagnetic properties to generate the breast image. Fortunately, dielectric properties of malign tumors shows very high contrast compare to the normal tissue and to benign tumors.