EARLY DETECTION OF BREAST CANCER BY 3D ULTRASOUND TOMOGRAPHY
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: Early detection is the most effective way to reduce deaths from breast disease, and mammography is the current “gold standard” for diagnosing breast disease. However, most cancers arise in dense ductal tissue, so lesion detection for women with dense breasts and at increased risk for breast disease is particularly challenging. Ultrasound is an important adjunct to mammography to identify, characterize and localize breast lesions, and it is not limited by dense breasts. Ultrasound also requires no radiation or compression. However, ultrasound is operator dependent and a lack of consistency between centers limits widespread acceptance. To be truly useful ultrasound must provide more consistent, high quality imaging with less operator dependence. This research proposes a new approach to ultrasound imaging wherein we will construct a breast ultrasound scanner to image the entire breast. This scanner design will provide consistent, high quality images of breast tissues especially in women with dense breasts or young women at increased risk who require more frequent imaging. The resulting high quality images should improve visualization of dense breasts and will improve early identification of breast cancer and help localize those cancers so they may be biopsied or treated more cost-effectively.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 This IDEA competitive renewal project continues the work begun in our original CBCRP IDEA grant (2005) where we focused on designing and constructing a volume breast ultrasound (VBUS) scanner and performing an initial assessment of its performance in test objects and a limited number of volunteers. Scanner performance met the design objectives. In the next phase we will to continue adding refinements to improve scanner performance and expand our clinical studies to patients with breast tumors identified by mammography. We will compare scanner performance to breast CT, conventional ultrasound and mammography. We also will add blood flow imaging capability to the scanner and evaluate tumor vascularity (i.e., blood perfusion) in a group of patients with breast tumors. We plan to accumulate sufficient correlative imaging performance data to support an application for a larger clinical trial.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The development of a VBUS scanner should, (1) provide more consistent imaging and improve visualization of the architecture of dense breast glandular tissue, and (2) provide improved characterization of breast lesions and better localization of those lesions particularly in women with dense breasts or young women at increased risk who require more frequent imaging. Also, the VBUS scanner would be excellent for imaging contrast agents for blood flow and perfusion imaging. The lower cost of a VBUS scanner compared to full-field-digital-mammography (FFDM) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) also provides a more cost effective imaging modality available to a wider range of patients. Finally, since ultrasound is the modality of choice for biopsy guidance the improved data from a VBUS scanner would directly complement and benefit biopsy procedures.