READ

New imaging tool to reduce trauma for breast cancer patients

Perth engineers are developing a tool which could prevent thousands of breast cancer patients going under the knife for a second time.
Samille Mitchell
Samille Mitchell
Freelance journalist
New imaging tool to reduce trauma for breast cancer patients
Image credit: Wes Allen

If future trials also prove successful, the tool could transform breast surgery theatres across the globe.

Improvements in breast cancer detection mean more patients are having tumours removed, rather than undergoing full mastectomies.

REMOVING TUMOURS

To do this, doctors remove the tumour, plus a margin of healthy flesh to ensure the tumour does not return.

Pathologists then examine the removed flesh in a process that takes several days.

If they discover more malignant tumour near the edge of the lump removed, the patient must return to the operating table. This happens in about a quarter of all cases.

A NEW IMAGING TOOL

The new optical imaging tool will enable surgeons to examine the removed flesh while the patient remains on the operating table.

If the tool shows malignant tissue near the edge, the surgeon can remove additional flesh in the one procedure.

The process is called ‘optical coherence elastography’. It works similar to ultrasound, only it uses light reflection to paint a picture inside human flesh, rather than sound.

The benchtop system directs infrared light into the flesh and records the reflected light to generate a 3D, high-resolution image.

The system also measures the mechanical properties of the flesh. It achieves this by compressing the flesh during imaging and tracking the movement at each pixel.

Soft regions will compress more than stiff regions. Combining the mechanical properties with the optical properties increases the ability of the system to detect malignant tumour.

View Larger

Scans of breast tissue using the new optical imaging tool

Image credit: Wes Allen
View Larger

The new optical imaging tool

Image credit: Wes Allen

DETECTING MICROSCOPIC REGIONS OF TUMOURS

UWA PhD student, based at The Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, Wes Allen says surgeons rely on touch to find the hard flesh that may be cancerous. But the new imaging technique is able to detect microscopic regions of tumour the finger isn’t sensitive enough to feel.

With positive results from a preliminary study of 78 scanned specimens, Wes and a team of engineers, surgeons and pathologists will now embark on a large-scale trial involving hundreds of cases.

If successful, the trial will pave the way for surgeons to use the tool in theatres worldwide.

“It’s really exciting,” Wes says. “We hope that there will be one of these machines in every breast surgery theatre in the world.”

In a related study, scientists are also now working on developing the machine into a hand-held probe. Surgeons could use the probe to scan flesh inside the body cavity during surgery.

Samille Mitchell
About the author
Samille Mitchell
Samille Mitchell is a long-time freelance journalist. She has authored four non-fiction books and penned countless environment, science, travel, news and human interest articles. She also founded and publishes Inspired Magazine. Samille loves the way science reveals the seemingly magical workings of nature.
View articles
Samille Mitchell is a long-time freelance journalist. She has authored four non-fiction books and penned countless environment, science, travel, news and human interest articles. She also founded and publishes Inspired Magazine. Samille loves the way science reveals the seemingly magical workings of nature.
View articles

NEXT ARTICLE

We've got chemistry, let's take it to the next level!

Get the latest WA science news delivered to your inbox, every fortnight.

Republish

Creative Commons Logo

Republishing our content

We want our stories to be shared and seen by as many people as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright on the stories on Particle belongs to Scitech and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This allows you to republish our articles online or in print for free. You just need to credit us and link to us, and you can’t edit our material or sell it separately.

Using the ‘republish’ button on our website is the easiest way to meet our guidelines.

Guidelines

You cannot edit the article.

When republishing, you have to credit our authors, ideally in the byline. You have to credit Particle with a link back to the original publication on Particle.

If you’re republishing online, you must use our pageview counter, link to us and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished. It’s a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the ‘republish’ then you’ll capture our page counter.

If you’re republishing in print, please email us to let us so we know about it (we get very proud to see our work republished) and you must include the Particle logo next to the credits. Download logo here.

If you wish to republish all our stories, please contact us directly to discuss this opportunity.

Images

Most of the images used on Particle are copyright of the photographer who made them.

It is your responsibility to confirm that you’re licensed to republish images in our articles.

Video

All Particle videos can be accessed through YouTube under the Standard YouTube Licence.

The Standard YouTube licence

  1. This licence is ‘All Rights Reserved’, granting provisions for YouTube to display the content, and YouTube’s visitors to stream the content. This means that the content may be streamed from YouTube but specifically forbids downloading, adaptation, and redistribution, except where otherwise licensed. When uploading your content to YouTube it will automatically use the Standard YouTube licence. You can check this by clicking on Advanced Settings and looking at the dropdown box ‘License and rights ownership’.
  2. When a user is uploading a video he has license options that he can choose from. The first option is “standard YouTube License” which means that you grant the broadcasting rights to YouTube. This essentially means that your video can only be accessed from YouTube for watching purpose and cannot be reproduced or distributed in any other form without your consent.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: particle@scitech.org.au

Copy this HTML into your CMS
Press Ctrl+C to copy