New Technique for Diagnosing Breast Cancer

The study was published in the June 2002 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

Investigators from the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN, USA) modified an MRI scanner to beam sound waves into the breast during an MRI. This technique provided data that was processed to yield images displaying the mechanical properties of breast tissue. In the study, the technique was tested on six healthy women and six women with known breast cancer. The images of women with breast cancer demonstrated areas of very high tissue stiffness corresponding to the known tumors. On average, the stiffness of the breast cancer tissue was more than four times higher than the surrounding tissue. Other imaging modalities do not provide information on the mechanical properties of breast tissue

"Malignant breast tumors tend to be much harder than normal tissues and most benign tumors,” says Richard Ehman, M.D., a Mayo Clinic diagnostic radiologist and principal investigator of the study. "This explains why breast cancer is often detected by physical examination simply on the basis of a very hard lump in the breast.”





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