eNEWSLETTER SIGNUP
Sign up for our free
Industry eNewsletters
Q+A CENTER
Latest question:
How do you think the new GigE standards will influence the machine vision industry?
Respond or ask your question now!
News Features
Most Read
Most E-mailed
E-mail Article
Print Article
Digital Breast Tomosynthesis Adds Another Dimension
Thanks to partnerships, patents and licensing, latest technology accelerates patient throughput
Today, women who need to get checked for breast cancer usually undergo a traditional mammogram. While the women see the need to get this procedure done, there have been drawbacks to mammography.
The women have to endure the pain of the compression of the breast; in addition, the compression causes overlapping of the breast tissue, which means the cancer can hide in the breast tissue and never be detected. Mammograms only take one picture across the entire breast, from top to bottom and side to side.
However, there is promise. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, MA) have developed a 3-D mammography technique that makes it possible to explore the interior of the breast without the superimposition of the other tissues. While not yet clinically available or FDA-approved, digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) provides greater detail and clarity, and allows physicians to identify tumors that are easy to miss with the 2-D approach. DBT combines the data from eleven low-dose 2-D images to create a single 3-D composite image, using no additional examination time, X-ray energy and fewer breast compressions.
It Started In Venice
At the European Congress of Radiology in Vienna, Austria earlier this month, Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. (Chelmsford, MA) and NVIDOA Corp. (Santa Clara, CA) announced the first results of Mercury's partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital, in which Mercury greatly reduced the image reconstruction time for the 3-D mammography technique from five hours to five minutes. According to the company, by leveraging NVIDIA's technology, the performance increased by a factor of 60.
Approximately two years ago, Dr. Daniel B. Kopans, director of breast imaging at Mass General, approached Mercury Computer Systems about developing the DBT system. "We usually architect systems that optimize both hardware and software solutions to this," explained Marcelo Lima, vice president of Life Sciences, Imaging and Visualization Solutions, Mercury Computer Systems, "so we went ahead, did a research partnership with Mass General, and licensed their algorithm."
