The discovery of early-stage breast cancer without painful and labor-intensive mammography scans.

The challenge

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women and therefore a major public health problem. According to the American Cancer Society, one in eight women in the US will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. Mammography screening programmes make it possible to detect breast cancer early and start treatment early in order to prevent disease progress. However, these scans are expensive, painful for women and labour intensive. Furthermore, these screening programmes are not accessible to all women in the world and do not provide women with clear results.

The solution

The proposed solution is an alternative device for the clinical mammography based on integrated sensors for early breast cancer diagnostics achieved by BIS and NIRS spectroscopy. The proposed device can be designed in a way that it can be used by a small clinic and eventually to make the step to home self-diagnostics. Furthermore, we want to make people more aware of manual self-examination of the breasts. The device and the awareness campaign are interconnected.