New breast imaging tech can tell malignant from benign 

The Horizon2020 project SOLUS combines imaging and ultrasound techniques, with patients examined using a non-invasive pen probe, similar to that used for pregnancy scans. Using a technique called ‘diffuse optical imaging’, the probe can monitor changes in concentrations of oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin, collagen, lipids and water present in a suspected tumour against a pre-programmed set of results. It’s these parameters that indicate whether a tumour is cancerous or not. 

“We have been applying diffuse optics to different aspects of breast cancer (lesion discrimination and an estimate of cancer risk) for 20 years now,” said Professor Paola Taroni from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. 

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“Our team developed a multi-wavelength time-domain optical mammography which was used in clinical studies on more than 400 patients. Now an upgraded version has just entered clinics for the monitoring of neoadjuvant chemotherapy of breast cancer. Furthermore, our group performed a lot of work on other diagnostic applications, such as functional brain imaging and muscle oximetry.”