Health

Hand-held scanner that spots tiny breast lumps

Some women find the breast screening process uncomfortable. A new hand-held device could offer an alternative to manual checks.
Some women find the breast screening process uncomfortable. A new hand-held device could offer an alternative to manual checks. Some women find the breast screening process uncomfortable. A new hand-held device could offer an alternative to manual checks.

A HIGH-TECH, handheld scanner could help diagnose breast cancer early.

The gadget, which painlessly examines breast tissue, accurately detects small lumps under the skin in five to 10 minutes, research suggests, and picks up those a manual examination might miss.

Similar in size and shape to a small iron, it offers an alternative to the manual breast checks carried out by GPs.

Around 55,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the UK. Almost all (98 per cent) patients diagnosed at the earliest stage of the disease survive for at least five years.

For those whose cancer isn't detected until the latest stage, the figure is 25 per cent.

Currently, women undergo mammograms if referred by a GP, or as part of the national screening programme that's offered to all women aged 50 to 71 every three years. These identify around 87 per cent of tumours.

But almost half of women don't turn up for their appointments, according to NHS Digital.

This may be because they find the process uncomfortable. Some women also have concerns about the radiation involved (although the exposure from one scan is very small - equivalent to seven weeks of the background radiation from our everyday surroundings, suggests the American Cancer Society, from things such as microwaves).

The new, battery-operated scanner has hundreds of tiny, vibrating, ceramic plates on its underside.

These measure the elasticity of the tissue as the device is gently pressed down on the breast and moved across it - less elastic or stiffer areas indicate a lump.

The results are then wirelessly sent to a computer, which produces a 'map' of the breast tissue. A 2020 study of almost 500 women in the US found the handheld scanner to be as good as manual breast examinations at detecting lumps.

The iBreastExam was also found to be helpful in triaging - deciding which women should be sent for mammograms - according to the research published in the journal JCO Global Oncology.

The device has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the US medical regulator, and is being used in India, Egypt and Mexico to help untrained health staff.

Commenting on the technology, Dr Mohsen El Gammal, a consultant breast surgeon for The Harley Medical Group, based in London, says the new device could be especially useful in GP surgeries to help determine which patients need further investigation.

"There are lots of patients who don't actually have a lump but are worried, and primary care staff may not have much experience to tell the difference," he says.

"However, it does not replace mammograms or specialist opinion which requires years of experience."

MEANWHILE, a computer algorithm can determine whether breast lumps are cancerous by analysing high-tech breast scans, report researchers from the University of Dartmouth in the US, who developed the software.

It combines and analyses two types of images - MRI scans and near-infrared spectral tomography, a type of scan technology that uses infrared light to provide detailed images about breast tissue, and which has only been used in trials.

The new software, which is called Z-Net, takes only seconds to read the combined scans and make a judgment on whether there is cancer present, according to the journal Optica.

The researchers hope to soon test the accuracy of the software in clinical trials.

© Daily Mail