UMass Amherst Engineer Designing a Portable Breast Cancer Screening Device for Use in Remote Clinics, Hospitals

Nov. 13, 2008

Contact:

Anatoliy Boryssenko 413/577-1421

AMHERST, Mass. – To bring modern breast cancer screening to Third World countries without the danger, high cost and access problems of X-ray-based machines, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is building a portable alternative that uses low-power microwaves. It should be affordable and adaptable even for remote locations, and could be useful as a “second opinion” to complement conventional mammography in any setting, says Anatoliy Boryssenko, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

He recently received two seed grants totaling just under $60,000 from the nonprofit, Friends for an Earlier Breast Cancer Test, and the Collaborative Biomedical UMass-Baystate Research, to design and build a prototype and test its effectiveness for breast cancer screening. Boryssenko’s student, senior Christopher Merola, will carry out much of the actual construction, calibration and testing at the UMass Amherst Center for Advanced Sensor and Communication Antennas (CASCA) at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield.

“Right now, the main technology for detecting breast cancer remains X-ray mammography, which is quite expensive for broad population coverage and frequent screening,” says Boryssenko. “So one of our goals is to create an inexpensive alternative system for clinics that cannot afford the traditional equipment. Our safe and less expensive equipment could be deployed in rural clinics and field hospitals where women do not currently have any access to mammography.”

The painless new technique would take advantage of the fact that normal breast tissue and cancer cells have different electrical properties. The differences can be identified and measured using an array of tiny transmitters and external sensors embedded in the walls of a cylinder that fits comfortably around the breast.

With the subject lying face down on a special table with the cylinder fitted around her suspended breast, the setup bathes breast tissues for a short time in a low-power microwave-frequency electromagnetic field. By collecting feedback scattered from tissues and running this data through software designed to recognize the electric signatures of normal vs. tumor tissue, the machine detects differences. Boryssenko is developing software that reads the signal feedback and identifies possible abnormalities that might indicate the need for medical follow-up.

“At this stage, we need to do many hours of measurements so we can accurately calibrate the microwave arrays in this chamber,” says Boryssenko. “We expect to have a prototype ready in about four months. Then we’ll start double-blinded experiments with a properly shaped container of breast phantom medium (liquid that simulates human breast tissue), randomly including dummy tumors, to assess our ability to find them.”

#104-09

E-mail story to a friend Printer-friendly version