The great need for a simple, efficacious, portable and affordable breast tumor detector is evidenced by all of the publications using other technologies that are immobile, expensive or inefficacious. Near infrared (NIR) technology using laser light sources at an optical window from 700-900 nm is shown to carry diagnostic value for early detection of breast cancer. Based on photon migration principle in highly scattering media like the breast, near infrared imaging technology exploits the optical properties of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin to localize the cancer tissue. It is a very well established fact that the cancerous tissue requires high levels of blood hence angiogenesis proceeds the early stages of the tumor. Near-infrared technology has been the only non-invasive system to image the excessive oxygen consumption and the inhomogeneous blood distribution in a tissue during cancerogenesis. Advances in sensor and detector technology has increased the resolution of this innovative technology to 5 mm.
Our aim i s to design and develop a hand-held instrument that is safe, economic and fast in diagnosing breast cancer at an early stage.The portability and affordability of the device will prove to be very helpful in pre-screening of the under represented population. This project proposes a hand-held, fast affordable, battery operated breast tumor detector. None of the characteristics of the parent instrument ACTM are sacrificed and the translational study made with the parent instrument should be applicable to this novel, hand-held instrument. Thus the impact is expected to be greatest on under-served, geographically inaccessible populations.
A hand-held Near Infra Red Imaging apparatus has great in clinic as well as in home usage. The basic technology developed here can be utilized for the following applications: Early detection of breast cancer, pre- screening of under served population, screening of patients in rural areas, decreasing the cost of breast cancer screening. Each Of the above application area covers a large segment of the population. We estimate that in a steady state 200,000 unit to be manufactured. We anticipate a manufacturing cost of $600 and a selling price of about $1200.
