HYMPACT
One of the most important cancers among woman is breast cancer. Early detection of the tumor and good detection of the borders of the tumor will increase recovery rate tremendesly.
The standard for todays screening program is mamography. During this procedure the breast is compressed an exposed to X-ray. This is very inconvienent to patient.
To overcome the issues of making an image of the breast a novell approach was introduced by the TU Twente by using laserlight in combination with an Ultrasound transducer an image can be obtainded.
The image below shows the principal behind this technique
The TU-Twente showed by using their prototype device PAM 1 that it is feasiable to make photoacoustic images. This shown in the second image where a normal X-ray image and the photo-acoustic image are combined.
Photoacoustics
With this setup making a scan can take up to 45 minutes. Together with a optimized laser setup for iluminating the breast a curved matrix ultrasound transducer will be build.
The transducer consist a matrix of 640 elements directly connected to an ampliefier and a multiplexer by means of flex circuits. In order to increase the opening angle of the elements each element will be equipped with an individual lens.