In India, Breast Cancer Screening Goes High-Tech

#News(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

One in every two Indian women with breast cancer do not survive. Only 66 percent live past five years of being diagnosed, compared to rates of around 90 percent in the U.S., Australia, and other Western countries.

To tackle the problem of late diagnosis, a number of companies have developed new screening devices in recent years. They employ different technologies, ranging from artificial intelligence and machine learning to thermal imaging and immunoassays, but all strive towards the same aim: to make screening more accessible and affordable to women living throughout India. Whether these companies — Niramai, MammoAlert, iBreastExam, just to name a few — can actually lower breast cancer mortality rates remains to be seen, but for now they seem to be making headway with early detection.

Sixty-six percent of India’s population lives in rural areas, where poor transportation links and a lack of electricity are common problems. Doctors are also in short supply, with roughly one radiologist per 100,000 people (the ratio in the U.S. is 10 times higher). Which is why all the new screening devices being developed are battery operated, easily portable, and simple enough to use with minimal training.

For clinical screening, the effectiveness of a given device is typically determined by two measures: sensitivity and specificity. “Sensitivity” refers to a test’s ability to correctly identify those with a disease. “Specificity” refers to a test’s ability to correctly identify those without a disease. So far, the company has reported results from two clinical studies, with the most recent showing that Niramai’s rates of sensitivity and specificity are both above 90 percent, significantly better than mammography on both measures. In addition, Niramai was found to be 18 percent more sensitive than its human counterpart at analyzing thermal images for potential malignancy

There’s a third screening tool, however, that has been tested in a wider swath of the population. Since 2015, the FDA-cleared iBreastExam has been used with more than 150,000 women throughout India, as well as in six other countries: Botswana, Indonesia, Mexico, Myanmar, Nepal, and Oman.
iBreastExam is a handheld, wireless device slightly larger than a supermarket barcode scanner. When placed upon a patient’s breast, the scanner’s 16 sensors measure tissue stiffness. Hard lesions — indicative of a tumor — are flagged in real time on an accompanying smartphone app with a reported sensitivity and specificity of 84 and 94 percent, respectively.

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