Calcification is the most frequent indication of early breast cancer and may be seen before a mass is palpable or radiographically detectable. Currently mammography is the only reliable method for imaging calcifications. Other diagnostic techniques cannot image calcium deposits. However, mammography has a high rate of false positives. This is often a cause of great worry and inconvenience for patients, as well as incurring the expense of further procedures like biopsy. Thus there is a need for improving the evaluation of breast microcalcifications. Towards this goal, the applicants propose a potentially novel ultrasonic technique for measuring calcifications that is based on the phenomenon of acoustic resonance (AR). The purpose of the study is to develop the technique of AR imaging for clinical use.
The first aim i s to build a prototype vibrator required to excite calcium deposits to resonance.
The second aim will optimize power Doppler imaging for detecting the resonance signal.
The third aim i s to correlate the acoustic resonance results with mammography and histology. At the conclusion of the study, the applicants projected that they would have a well tested methodology for detecting breast calcifications using ultrasound.
