Towards the Early Detection of Breast Cancer in Young Women; Final rept. 30 Sep 2004-29 Sep 2006

摘要

Although mammography is a valuable screening tool for breast cancer, it is less effective in younger women. Further, cancers in this age group are aggressive, and survival rates are lower. There is need for an effective screening technique to complement clinical and self breast exams. Elasticity Imaging (EI) could assume this role, as it relies on extracting information from ultrasound images which are unaffected by the denseness of the breast. The application of EI to breast cancer detection utilizes the fact that tumors are stiffer than the surrounding tissue, and may be easily discerned in an image of the spatial variation of stiffness. We believe that in order to realize the true diagnostic potential of EI, the linear-elastic model which is typically used, must be replaced by a more realistic non-linear one. Experimental data suggests that this may lead to clearer differentiation of several important tissue types. Our long term goal is to develop and test an ultrasound-based methodology for generating multiple-parameter elasticity images of breast tissue for improved diagnosis and detection of breast cancer in young women. Our aim for this grant is to obtain proof of concept results.