A wearable ultrasound patch that attaches to a bra could help detect breast cancer more quickly in high-risk women.
It takes less than five minutes to use and should detect tumors missed between mammograms.
For most women, the risk of detecting slow-growing tumors that wouldn’t cause a problem and treating them unnecessarily means that additional scans between mammograms are unnecessary.
But women at high risk of developing aggressive breast cancer could potentially benefit from additional ultrasounds, which are much safer, radiation-free and can be done at home.
A wearable ultrasound patch attached to a bra can detect tumors so small they are missed by standard screening methods (shown above)
Scientists have created a honeycomb-shaped patch worn over a sports bra – both with six holes that expose key areas of the breast
Scientists have created a honeycomb-shaped patch that is worn over a sports bra – both with six holes that expose key areas of the chest.
The patch snaps easily into place on the bra, using magnets to secure it.
An ultrasonic device, also with magnets, can then be clicked over each hole in turn.
The device can be rotated 30 degrees at a time, with the click of a magnet showing how far it’s rotated, to make it easy to use.
This yields six measurements, which a new study says can penetrate 80 mm (three inches) into the chest.
Tried on a 71-year-old woman with a history of breast abnormalities, it was able to detect cysts as small as 0.3 centimeters in diameter, which is the size of an early-stage tumor.
Dr. Canan Dagdeviren, senior author of the study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who hopes the breast patch will be available to buy in five years, said: “I came up with this idea when my aunt, Fatma Caliskanoglu, was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. stage of breast cancer at age 49, despite regular mammograms.
She died six months later and we sketched out the idea for this plaster in the hospital in her last 12 days of life.
“Now it’s a reality, and it’s very personal to me because I want to help save women’s lives.”
The rigid honeycomb patch, with its six precisely placed holes, ensures that each image captures specific areas of each breast.
The portable ultrasound device used on top of the patch channels an electrical current that is converted by special crystals into sound waves that penetrate the breast tissue.
If they hit cysts or tumors, these masses will appear in the ultrasound image.
The first prototype comes with a cable and circuit board, so needs to be plugged in in a medical setting, but the researchers hope to make it wireless and test it on hundreds of other women.
The patch snaps easily into place on the bra, using magnets to secure it
The graph above shows the number of breast cancers in women as a percentage per 100,000 people compared to the death rate represented by the red squares. While death rates have fallen, cases are still rising. The blue and green dots are from two different databases that track breast cancer rates over different time periods
Currently, in order to view the ultrasound images, the scanner must be connected to an image processor, such as those used in hospitals, but work is underway to develop a miniaturized screen the size of a smartphone on which to view the scan results.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, found that the prototype device, when tested on a single patient, performed as well as a hand-held ultrasound machine currently in use in hospitals.
More data on testing in other women will be published early next year.
Of the reusable device, which currently costs about $1,000 (about £780) but only about $3 per scan, Dr Dagdeviren said: “We want a woman to be able to scan her breasts while drinking her morning coffee, every month when she likes, between mammograms, for reassurance.’
Catherine Ricciardi, director of nursing at MIT’s Center for Clinical and Translational Research, and co-author of the study, said, “As a nurse, I have witnessed the negative outcomes of delayed diagnosis.
“This technology promises to break the many barriers to early detection of breast cancer by providing a more reliable, comfortable and less intimidating diagnosis.”