A wearable ultrasound scanner could detect breast cancer earlier – MIT Media Lab
The new device, which can be incorporated into a bra, could allow more frequent monitoring of patients at high risk for breast cancer.
Does it have to be wearable? Wouldn't it be enough to have one at home for daily checks? Sure, it's an agressive cancer, but it's not acting that fast.
The device needs to get positioned at 6 repeatable places. Usually the doc does that, but now the patients are doing it to themselves.
This bra and the white frame does the job. You don't want to have tatooed crosshairs there on your boob.
Americans would rather start a digital surveillance program for boobs than fix our healthcare system.
No American could afford to even wear it temporaily. They'd charge like 1 mil an hour.
This is going to just increase false positives and unnecessary biopsies. This level of surveillance is not beneficial.
Edit: maybe for extremely high risk groups like it says in the article I guess, but the fact that they're explicitly testing it to detect noncancerous cysts (false positives) doesn't improve my confidence.
No one is going to get a biopsy after testing positive once. A positive test would mean you go to a doctor for a proper mammogram, THEN maybe a biopsy.
That's still an increased level of surveillance that is going against current recommendations. Unnecessary mammograms still result in unnecessary biopsies. You could use it for increased monitoring to detect growth I guess, but I doubt ultrasound is capable of that sort of resolution.