Breast imaging with the SoftVue imaging system: first results

Abstract

For women with dense breast tissue, who are at much higher risk for developing breast cancer, the performance of mammography is at its worst. Consequently, many early cancers go undetected when they are the most treatable. Improved cancer detection for women with dense breasts would decrease the proportion of breast cancers diagnosed at later stages, which would significantly lower the mortality rate. The emergence of whole breast ultrasound provides good performance for women with dense breast tissue, and may eliminate the current trade-off between the cost effectiveness of mammography and the imaging performance of more expensive systems such as magnetic resonance imaging.We report on the performance of SoftVue, a whole breast ultrasound imaging system, based on the principles of ultrasound tomography. SoftVue was developed by Delphinus Medical Technologies and builds on an early prototype developed at the Karmanos Cancer Institute. We present results from preliminary testing of the SoftVue system, performed both in the lab and in the clinic. These tests aimed to validate the expected improvements in image performance. Initial qualitative analyses showed major improvements in image quality, thereby validating the new imaging system design. Specifically, SoftVue's imaging performance was consistent across all breast density categories and had much better resolution and contrast. The implications of these results for clinical breast imaging are discussed and future work is described.

Frequency domain ultrasound waveform tomography: breast imaging using a ring transducer

“…The first device (Duric et al, 2007), an early prototype developed at the Karmanos Cancer Institute, has a ring array transducer with a 100 millimeter radius, 256 transducer elements, and a signal bandwidth centered at 1.5 MHz. The second device (Duric et al, 2013), a recent prototype developed by Delphinus Medical Technologies, Inc., has a transducer with a 110 millimeter radius, 2048 transducer elements, and a signal bandwidth centered at 2.75 MHz. For further details, see (Roy et al, 2013).…”

Determinants of the reliability of ultrasound tomography sound speed estimates as a surrogate for volumetric breast density

“…3, [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Of additional importance, UST provides the opportunity to conduct serial breast scans without the risk of ionizing radiation and to monitor changes in breast density over time. 18 Obtaining reliable estimates of density change is clinically relevant as a growing number of studies have demonstrated that changes in breast density are associated with response to some breast cancer treatments, such as tamoxifen.…”

A Deep Learning Framework for Single-Sided Sound Speed Inversion in Medical Ultrasound

“…An alternative approach, used mostly in the field of breast imaging, is travel time tomography [10], [11]. Here, the speed of compression, or longitudinal, waves in tissue is measured based on the acoustic travel times between known location pairs.…”