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A new handheld optical imager promises advances over current handheld optical mammography devices by providing a 3-D image of the entire breast on a flexible surface that better matches natural curvature, according to study data presented on Tuesday at the 2008 meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA 2008). Currently available handheld devices are flat and provide only spectroscopic imaging. "Our goal is to come up with a portable device that matches breast curvature with a flexible probe head and also perform tomographic imaging where you can get a 3-D image," explained Anuradha Godavarty, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering of Florida International University, who conducted the study. (Read the abstract here.) "There are implications for use in diagnosis, prognosis, and chemotherapeutics."

Tissue phantoms—essentially a spherical object inside a cube—were used in a study that demonstrated real-time co-registered imaging. 3-D tomographic analysis was then used to successfully recover the target. In addition, a heterogeneous scattering medium was used to simulate a real environment of a breast with cancer tumors and here also the objects were located in a 3-D manner. Preliminary studies in-vivo are now ongoing to demonstrate the effectiveness of real-time co-registration in actual tissues with curvatures. "The next step would then be to test the device on actual breast cancer subjects where we already know they have breast cancer from another imaging modality such as x-ray screening, and we perform the same study, with and without FDA-approved contrast agents measured with real time and tomographic mapping," Dr. Godavarty said in an interview with MedicExchange.

Dr. Godavarty is actively looking to enter clinical trials, seeking clinical partners and sources of funding to accelerate the program. "The technology would be a very good diagnostic tool which is more portable and relatively inexpensive compared to MRI," Dr. Godavarty told MedicExchange. "The doctor can run the test in their office very quickly and complement that with the x-ray, which is more of a screening tool."