A survey of breast cancer screening techniques: thermography and electrical impedance tomography

Abstract

Breast cancer is a disease that threat many women's life, thus, the early and accurate detection play a key role in reducing the risk in patient's life. Mammography stands as the reference technique for breast cancer screening, nevertheless many countries still lack access to mammograms due to economic, social and cultural issues. Last advances in computational tools, infrared cameras and devices for bio-impedance quantification, have given the chance to emerge other reference techniques like, thermography, infrared thermography and electrical impedance tomography, these being faster, reliable and cheaper. In the last decades, these have been considered as parallel procedures for breast cancer diagnosis, as well many authors concluded that false positives and false negatives rates are greatly reduce. This work aims to review the last breakthroughs about the three above-mentioned techniques and to describe the benefits of mixing several computational skills to obtain a better global performance.In addition, we provide a comparison between several machine learning technique going from logistic regression, decision trees and random forest to artificial, deep and convolutional neural networks. Finally, recommendations and contemporary advances in breast cancer diagnosis approaches are made, such as 3D breast simulations, pre-processing techniques, devices in the research field, prediction of tumor location and size.

Multicentric study to evaluate the effectiveness of Thermalytix as compared with standard screening modalities in subjects who show possible symptoms of suspected breast cancer

“…8 Thermography along with an ML classifier, trained by giving extracted features, specifically corresponding to metabolic, physical, structural, symmetrical and vascular properties of the tumour could reduce the false-positive and false-negative rates. 9 The first clinical study to evaluate the performance of thermography was done in 1980 10 in over 58 000 symptomatic women. Among these women, 1245 women diagnosed normal or benign by conventional screening exhibited questionable thermal anomaly using thermography.…”

A Systematic Review of Breast Cancer Detection Using Thermography and Neural Networks

“…Surveys have been conducted in relation to application of automated systems in cancer detection such as computer aided diagnostic systems [66] with precursor attempts appearing in [68], thermography, infrared thermography and electrical impedance tomography [70], highly diversified early attempts at automated systems [71], standards and protocols to Infrared imaging technology for breast cancer detection [72], CNN based thermal imaging for breast cancer detection [79] and various screening tools to detect breast cancer [73]. There are no emphasis on the thermal camera used, image acquisition procedures for mobile phones and public databases.…”

Diagnostic accuracy and prognostic value of three-dimensional electrical impedance tomography imaging in patients with breast cancer

“…Recent advances in computational tools for bioimpedance quantification have allowed EIT to become faster, more reliable, and cheaper (9,10). Over the past several years, few studies have been published on 3D EIT for clinical diagnosis and outcomes for patients with malignant breast lesions.…”