Breast cancer is a scary word. When it is found early, almost everyone can beat it.
If it’s found late, only about 1 in 4 people can. So, scientists at MIT have made a new tool that might help find it early.
This new tool is a small sticker that can be put on a bra. It uses sound waves, like an echo, to see inside the breast.
This way, it can help spot tumors when they are still small. The sticker is flexible, which means it bends and moves with you. It’s easy to use and can give quick results.
How Did They Make It?
A scientist named Canan Dagdeviren had an aunt who had breast cancer. Her aunt had tests done often, but they didn’t find the cancer until it was late. Canan wanted to make a tool that could catch the cancer earlier.
There’s a type of breast cancer that grows fast and is often found between regular tests. Canan’s aim is to find these cancers before they get big. With this tool, she hopes to increase the survival rate to almost everyone.
The tool uses a mini scanner, a bit like the ones doctors use. But it’s small enough to fit on a sticker. The sticker is made with a 3D printer and has lots of little holes like a honeycomb. It sticks to a bra with magnets.
The scanner fits in a tracker that can be moved to different places. This means it can scan the whole breast from different angles. You don’t need to be a doctor or nurse to use it.
Can It Spot Cancer?
The team tried the tool on one woman who had small lumps in her breast. The tool could see these lumps, even though they were very small.
It gave a clear picture, as good as the big machines at the hospital. It could also look deep into the breast, up to about 3 inches.
Catherine Ricciardi, a nurse who worked on the study, thinks the tool is a good idea. It could make it easier for women to check their breasts regularly. This could help find cancer earlier and save more lives.
Right now, the team needs to connect their tool to a big machine to see the images. But they’re working on making a small machine that’s only about as big as a phone.
The sticker can be used again and again. It could be used at home by people who are at a higher risk for breast cancer. It could also be helpful for people who can’t easily get to a hospital for regular checks.
A doctor who treats breast cancer patients thinks the tool is promising. He says it could be a big help because women wouldn’t have to travel to a hospital to get a check-up.
In the future, the team hopes to use computers to look at how the pictures change over time. This could help spot cancer even more accurately. They also want to see if they can use the sticker to look at other parts of the body.
In the end, this little sticker might be a big step forward in the fight against breast cancer.
If you care about cancer, please read studies that mammograms over-diagnose 1 in 7 breast cancers in the U.S., and new ways to increase the longevity of cancer survivors.
For more information about cancer, please see recent studies about sweeteners linked to increased cancer risk, and results showing new ways to supercharge cancer-fighting T cells.
The study was published in Science Advances.
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