North Carolina startup OptoSonics, Inc. is developing new 3-D mammograms that produce more accurate and painless breast imaging.
High-resolution 3-D images of blood vessels inside the breast are created through a process called the photoacoustic effect, in which light absorption generates sound, according to Discovery News. The technology also aims at producing imaging that is fast and radiation-free.
"The idea is that because tumors induce the creation of additional blood vessels, you'd see a brighter spot and individual vessels feeding into the mass," said Robert Kruger, president and co-founder of OptoSonics.
Patients receiving a mammogram with the device lay facedown on a padded table, then put one breast through an aperture in a plastic cup filled partially with water. 500 electrosonic detectors surrounded the cup, while a near-infrared laser source sat at the bottom, IEEE Spectrum reported.
The tissue was zapped by the laser with 2.048 pulses in 1.7 minutes. The light was then tuned into a wavelength, which was then absorbed by hemoglobin in blood.
"Where the light gets absorbed, it creates heat and expands the tissue," Kruger said. "This expansion pushes on surrounding tissue and creates an acoustic wave. It's less than a microsecond of light, so only one-thousandth of a degree of heating, but it's enough to induce a sonic wave. Blood vessels absorb more light than other tissue, and when the optical absorption is stronger, the sound wave is stronger."
The ultrasonic waves traveled through breast tissue and surrounding water to the detector array. The waves then went to the computer to be synthesized. The images showed a network of blood vessels with a 0.6mm resolution, Discovery News reported.
Kruger said four patients at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have already been imaged. Optosonics plan to start clinical trials this summer at the university, as well as at Kyoto University in Japan. The company has licensed the technology to Japan's Canon, with which Optosonics will work to commercialize the technology.
Kruger added that the technology, which combines ultrasound with tomography, should be successful in the mammogram market.
