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News Channel 7
Published: September 06, 2012
Updated: September 06, 2012 - 2:22 PM
Research being done at the University of South Carolina has led to a potential breakthrough in detecting breast cancer. A team led by electrical engineering professor Dr. Krishna Mandal has developed a device that detects what are called "soft x-rays", which don't show up on current x-ray films or mammograms.
"This can identify this soft x-ray through the breast and with a high resolution," Dr. Mandal says. "This high-resolution detector, if we can utilize and make it large-scale production, I think it will be an excellent tool for physicians to detect and identify the breast cancer and we can accelerate the growth in breast cancer research."
His soft x-ray detector would be added to existing mammography machines, giving doctors much more detail and showing calcifications in breast tissue that current x-rays don't show.
It's an exciting development for Bren Miller. Several years ago, she felt a small lump in her breast. "I honestly just thought it was from lifting weights or something. I mean it was like a little piece of popcorn kernel or something," she says. She didn't suspect breast cancer and didn't go to the doctor.
Later, during a routine mammogram, she told her doctor about it. "I told them that it was there and they came back and they said, ?We didn?t get a picture of it at all.? And I go, ?Really?!? So they took me back in again, did another shot; nothing showed."
Because they also felt the lump, they then did an ultrasound and found the tumor. She had surgery and chemotherapy and is now cancer-free. ?But if I hadn?t have said something myself, I could?ve had a clean bill of health, you know, walking out of there and another year could?ve gone by and I could?ve been in mega-trouble. Mine was just stage one, but it would?ve been very aggressive," she says.
That's exactly the kind of thing that's often missed now but would be detected by Dr. Mandal's device.
"It's common for women even under 40 years of age to have calcifications," he says. "It's critical to know whether it exists in the tissue and especially whether it's spreading. But to see that, we need very high resolution detection systems, which is what we've made."
Doctors could use the device to follow the progression of calcifications over time.
He says the device is at least two years away from being able to be used by doctors.
Miller is excited about what the breakthrough will mean. ?Anything for early detection is just crucial,? she says.
Source: http://www2.wspa.com/news/2012/sep/06/potential-breakthrough-thanks-usc-breast-cancer-re-ar-4493155/
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