Byline: MARTYN HALLE
WOMEN could soon be testing themselves for breast cancer at home, using a tiny handheld scanner.
Scientists say they are two years away from launching the device.
The groundbreaking technology, to be sold in High Street chemists, could be particularly useful for younger and premenopausal women who are not screened for cancer.
The device uses infrared light to locate a tumour, so it can be used as often as a woman wishes without fear of causing harm.
It works on the principle that infrared light is absorbed by blood vessels and that higher levels of these exist when a tumour is present. Professor Banu Onaral, who leads the research team, says the scanner is able to separate normal blood vessels from tumour blood vessels.
'Extra blood vessels develop that supply the tumour with nutrients and oxygen. The tumour has a blood supply that is much greater than the surrounding breast tissue,' he says.
Tumours consume more oxygen than healthy tissues, so levels of haemoglobin, an oxygen-carrying blood protein, are different in normal tissue and tumours.
Researchers say the infrared light spots tumours by 'seeing' those variations in blood volume and oxygen.
Replica Monogram vernis Unlike mammography, ultrasound and MRI, which detect anatomical changes, their device looks at physiological changes which occur at the earliest stages of breast cancer.
Initial trials using several hundred women show the device is 94 per cent accurate at detecting tumours.
It can find those just a couple of centimetres in diameter buried deep in the breast. They would not be picked up by self examination, and would not be detectable until they had developed into a much larger growth.
The device is a plastic box, 10cm by 10cm, with a circuit containing two infrared lights.
It is small and light enough for a woman to carry in her handbag.
It is passed across the breast and when it identifies what could be an abnormality, a red light flashes and an alarm sounds. The information is stored on a microchip so that it can be analysed - if necessary - by a doctor.
'Younger women tend to have denser breasts and it is very difficult for mammogram X-rays to pick up abnormalities in denser Fake Fendi Handbags tissue,' says Dr Nioka Zang, a cancer specialist who has been working on trials of the device.
In the UK, less than 70 per cent of women eligible for screening take advantage of a check-up. Doctors think part of the reason might be that women find mammograms, where their breast is squashed between two plates for an Xray image, uncomfortable.
'We want to emphasise that women shouldn't miss out on mammograms.
However, if they are resistant to being screened, this device will go some way to offering reassurance,' says Dr Zang.
The device, expected to sell for around [pounds sterling]100, is being assessed at the American Foods and Drug Administration.
* WHEN Sue Hunter was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time, her world fell apart. But ten days after having her second breast removed, she felt well enough to participate in her favourite sport - fly fishing.
Miss Hunter, 52, from Berkshire
