New software created by FAU scientists and Boca Raton Community Hospital is set to improve breast cancer diagnosis. When used in combination with magnetic resonance imaging, this software gives a much better quality picture and makes it easier for the physicians to detect abnormalities among normal breast tissue seen in a mammogram or ultrasound.

For hard-to-diagnose cases, it could save a woman from a mastectomy by pinpointing the dimensions of a cancer and giving doctors the option of a lumpectomy.

It also could save a woman's life by finding cancers too small to show up in regular detection methods.

"There are a number of cases when you get a suspicious feeling from a mammography but you don't have a definitive diagnosis," said Roger Goldwyn, a mathematics professor at Florida Atlantic University who helped develop the new technology. "This enhanced MRI allows you to really determine what is there."

The software, technically called contrast enhanced dynamic imagining, is being used at Boca Raton Community Hospital's Center for Breast Care on high-risk patients and those recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

Eventhough the Food and Drug Administration approved the software in 2004, officials are just now asking for $10 million in federal money to help continue the research and package the program to allow more hospitals to use it.



Posted by: Betsy    Source

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