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Researchers from LITE and the Women's Imaging Centre in Lafayette and have been working with Dr. Laszlo Tabar, the world's preeminent figure in breast cancer diagnosis.

It wasn't a typical Memorial Day for local breast radiologist Dr. Robert Lapidus, Medical Director of Women's Imaging Centre in Lafayette, the new breast diagnostic facility which is affiliated with Women's and Children's Hospital, or for researchers at the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprises (LITE) complex in Lafayette, Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira, LITE's Executive Director and Chief Scientist, and Dr. Dirk Reiners, Assistant Professor of computer science of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Instead of attending a family outing, they were working with the world's preeminent figure in breast cancer diagnosis, Dr. Laszlo Tabar.

Dr. Tabar, the world's authority on breast imaging and known in international circles as the 'father of mammography,' conducted the Swedish studies in the late 1970's and early 1980's that proved that mammography screening programs would result in a significant reduction in breast cancer mortality. To this day, he remains at the cutting edge in breast cancer diagnosis. He is Professor of Radiology at Uppsala School of Medicine and Medical Director of Mammography, Falun Central Hospital in Falun, Sweden. Dr. Tabar has interpreted over 1,000,000 mammographic screening examinations since 1977, and has authored several text books on mammography as well as over 170 articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals. He has lectured thousands of physicians on six continents.

At Dr. Tabar's Multimodality Approach to the Detection and Diagnosis of Occult Breast Cancer workshop this past March in Santiago, Chile, Dr. Tabar expressed his dream of being able to present microscopic sections of the various breast cancer sub types in a three-dimensional format so that they would be better understood by radiologists, pathologists, surgeons, and other physicians, a feat he had been unable to accomplish.

When Dr. Lapidus heard Dr. Tabar's dream articulated for the third time, Lapidus realized he had the resources to make this happen. It turns out Dr. Lapidus has a relationship with the researchers at LITE in Lafayette. LITE is a $27 million, 70,000-square foot facility located at the research park of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Redefining how organizations see, think about and use information and data, LITE's technological infrastructure encourages and enables the development of innovative solutions using advanced 3-D visualization techniques, including immersive technologies, where a person could actually step in to and interact with a 3-D image. This is all done through LITE's high-performance computing capabilities which can process unimaginable volumes of data at accelerated speeds.

When Dr. Lapidus returned from Chile, he contacted Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira at LITE and explained the challenge. His explanation included the educational benefits of displaying the sub gross microscopic anatomy of malignant, as well as benign, breast conditions in 3-D so that medical professionals would have a better intuitive understanding of the variants of normal breast tissue as well as the different types of breast cancer. Dr. Cruz-Neira was confident that LITE could come up with a solution to visualize the microscopic sections of breast cancer subtypes.

Four weeks later, after LITE researcher Aashish Chaudhary and Dr. Dirk Reiners wrote a new software program, the mission was accomplished. Upon presentation of the final product, Lapidus quickly contacted Dr. Tabar to explain what a fantastic program had been developed. When Dr. Tabar heard the news, he rapidly made plans to fly in to Lafayette to work with Dr. Lapidus, Dr. Cruz-Neira and Dr. Reiners to further refine the synergies of 3-D technology as it can relate to imaging microscopic specimens of breast cancers and certain types of benign breast disease. Dr. Reiners says, "This is just the beginning and, for proof-of-concept purposes, a great deal of more work can be done to take the 3-D visualization of the microscopic sections to an even higher level."

Dr. Tabar and Dr. Lapidus are convinced that this technology will serve as a vehicle for better understanding of breast disease by physicians all over the world. According to Dr. Tabar, "This collaboration with Dr. Lapidus and LITE researchers will have a monumental impact on the way breast disease is taught to physicians around the world. Using this technique will improve communication amongst all team members that treat breast disease including radiologists, surgeons, pathologists, and medical oncologists. We are talking about a global issue."

Breast cancer forms in tissues of the breast, usually the ducts (tubes that carry milk to the nipple) and lobules (glands that make milk). It occurs in both men and women, although male breast cancer is rare. In 2008, there will be an estimated 200,000 new cases of breast cancer in the US alone, resulting in over 40,000 deaths. "At the end of the day," Dr. Lapidus says, "We need to use every last piece of technology available to combat this disease which all too commonly affects our sisters, mothers, and families."