Women's Health

a Schematic of the system. The entire solid tumour is illuminated from four sides by a four-arm fibre bundle. A cylindrically focused linear array is designed to detect optoacoustic signals from the tumour. In vivo imaging is performed in conical scanning geometry by controlling the rotation and translation stages. The sensing part of the transducer array and the tumour are submerged in water to provide acoustic coupling. b Maximum intensity projections of the optoacoustic reconstruction of a phantom of polyethylene microspheres (diameter, 20 μm) dispersed in agar. The inset shows a zoomed-in view of the region boxed with a yellow dashed line. In addition, the yellow boxes are signal profiles along the x, y and z axes across the microsphere centre, as well as the corresponding full width at half-maximum values. c Normalized absorption spectra of Hb, HbO2 and gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). The spectrum for the AuNPs was obtained using a USB4000 spectrometer (Ocean Optics, Dunedin, FL, USA), while the spectra for Hb and HbO2 were taken from http://omlc.org/spectra/haemoglobin/index.html. The vertical dashed lines indicate the five wavelengths used to stimulate the three absorbers: 710, 750, 780, 810 and 850 nm. Optoacoustic signals were filtered into a low-frequency band (red) and high-frequency band (green), which were used to reconstruct separate images.

Getty Images

Getty Images

Images in a 57-year-old woman noted to have "good prognosis" invasive cancer detected at digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) screening. (a) Craniocaudal view of the left breast obtained with the two-dimensional digital mammography (DM) portion of the DM/DBT screening study demonstrates a subtle area of distortion in the medial left breast. (b) Single-slice image from the left craniocaudal DBT portion of the screening study shows an area of bridging distortion (circle). (c) Electronically enlarged image of the area of concern seen on the left craniocaudal view in a single DBT slice as shown in b. (d) Targeted US scan demonstrates two small adjacent irregular solid masses. US-guided core biopsy yielded an invasive carcinoma of the tubular subtype that was estrogen receptor positive, progesterone receptor positive, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 negative. The results of the sentinel node biopsy were negative. Image courtesy of the Radiological Society of North America

Researchers who participated in the DM (digital mammography) DREAM Challenge.