Breast cancer is the second most common cancer and the second leading cause of death in women; yet current screening and diagnostic techniques are severely limited. A lack of specificity, testing inaccuracies, and late detection by mammography leads to misdiagnosis, unnecessary cost, and additional health risk. Further, mammography cannot distinguish between malignant tumors and benign masses, creating an 81% false positive exam rate requiring approximately 1 million unnecessary and painful biopsies every year.

Current ultrasound, used as a follow-up to mammography, is imprecise and limited; has difficulty penetrating deep into tissue; is highly operator dependent; and has relatively poor resolution and contrast. These problems translate into billions of dollars of unnecessary spending. The Computerized Ultrasound Risk Evaluation (CURE) system, developed by Karmanos Cancer Institute (KCI) and SciTech overcomes these shortcomings employing a full aperture, tomographic ultrasound imaging and risk assessment machine that examines women’s breasts to accurately detect both benign and/or malignant masses and provide the operator with a 'score' leading to a breast cancer diagnosis.

Because CURE is capable of collecting and interrogating sound as it is propagating through or scattering off different tissue types, new important information is provided about internal tissues not available from existing screening modalities. Initial clinical data suggests that CURE provides promise for improved sensitivity while producing additional specificity from the use of the newly available acoustic properties of masses presented in a superimposed image format. Additional competitive advantages of CURE over current ultrasound include its operator independent scanning, better penetration, marked artifact reduction, repeatability, and affordability.

The CURE mission is to design, develop, and market this new technology to safely and painlessly detect, identify, and characterize cancerous growths within living tissues. The CURE machine will enhance a radiologist’s ability to detect cancer as a full-view, operator independent ultrasound machine. The data from the current prototype shows that CURE can identify and clearly differentiate benign from malignant masses >1cm. As more data is collected, the technology can be optimized to an eventual cancer recognition potential =>95% for masses =>5mm, the smallest breast mass presently undergoing biopsy.

18 million mammograms are conducted annually in the US, and yet 10-15% evaded cancer detection. Even though women with suspicious masses have a follow-up ultrasound (US), breast cancer remains the second leading cause of death for woman. An obvious need exists for better, more reliable and accurate technology.

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