Revolutionizing Breast Cancer Detection: Canan Dagdeviren’s Wearable Ultrasound Patch

Breaking the Wall of Breast Cancer Detection

Winner Interview 2024: Engineering & Technology

Canan Dagdeviren has developed a groundbreaking conformable UltraSound Breast Patch (cUSBr-Patch). This innovative, portable ultrasound device offers a non-invasive, user-friendly solution for frequent breast cancer screenings, enabling early detection and continuous health monitoring, particularly benefiting those in resource-limited areas.

Which wall does your research or project break?

Medical ultrasound imaging has been widely studied owing to its advantages over computed tomography (CT), which uses ionizing radiation, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is costly and not widely available. Although beneficial because it avoids radiation, the ultrasound technology faces fundamental challenges limiting its usability as a ubiquitous wearable technology. In particular, it is not feasible for current ultrasound transducers to acquire imagery across curved body surfaces, especially over large body parts. For example, obtaining sufficient contact over soft surfaces of large areas (e.g., shoulder, breast) or small joints (e.g., finger joints, wrist joints) is not achievable, due to the rigid planar design of the existing ultrasound transducer versus the typical curvilinear shape of body parts. Moreover, accurate image reconstruction over large, curved areas is presently not possible. Whole-breast ultrasound imaging machines in hospital settings rely on high compression-based imaging, which distorts and flattens the breast and suffers from low sensitivity and specificity. It is not an ideal tool for routine breast screening, nor is it portable. The human breast presents a particular challenge, as its geometry and deformability are highly variable not only between subjects but also at different times and ages within a given subject. At the same time, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and breast tumors/lesions are typically located within the accessible penetration depth of sonography. Moreover, the occurrence of interval cancers, which develop between regular mammography screening periods, highlights a critical gap in current monitoring methods9. As a result, there is an opportunity to develop technology for longitudinal imaging of breast lesions both for early cancer detection and also to serve as a new non-invasive window into the biological behavior of breast tumors. It is important to recognize that other approaches—such as biopsy—provide a snapshot of tumor biology at a single point in time and are difficult to perform repeatedly owing to their invasiveness and/or high cost. This is not true for sonography, which can non-invasively obtain biological information from a breast tumor thousands of times a day without adverse effect.

What are the three main goals of your research or project?

Our technology (conformable UltraSound Breast Patch: cUSBr-Patch) provides a fundamental shift in how clinicians and patients could screen for, detect, and diagnose breast cancer, particularly as a broadly-accessible portable platform for routine medical screening interventions. We are reimagining the entire paradigm for both ultrasound technology and breast screening—from soft, wearable ultrasound electronics and miniaturized infrastructure, to how a regular person can simply ‘slap-on’ the device at home for user-friendly medical screening intervention.

Our goals are to 1) miniaturize bulky, rigid ultrasound technologies into soft, wearable form factors to enable broader access and portability for soft tissue imaging, 2) allow for more frequent screenings (particularly relevant for screening the interval cancers) and ‘big data’ collection (useful for AI-enhanced soft tissue imaging and breast cancer detection) and thus enable longitudinal health monitoring at home without the need for a trained clinician, 3) utilize our system as a platform technology for (i) the efficacy assessment of breast cancer drugs, (ii) pin-point accuracy in assessing tumor tissues for biopsy through elimination of applied mechanical pressure on target tissue by the operator, and (iii) numerous wearable/implantable ultrasound technologies to study soft tissue disorders, such as cancer in the lungs, prostate, thyroid, kidney, brain, and skin. This work will be particularly relevant to rural areas with limited resources, where a shortage of qualified ultrasound operators and related infrastructure greatly limits access to care. 

What advice would you give to young scientists or students interested in pursuing a career in research, or to your younger self starting in science?

Be yourself and do what you'd like to do. The life is too short to follow someone else's dream. Explore and recognize what you are good at, and what you want to do. Ask questions; it will help your world to expand when it starts to shrink. Be logically brave and firmly fair; speak kindly, think deeply, live simply, and generously love yourself, your decisions and the nature. Have a vigorously beating heart to pursue your dreams every single day. Remember that the electric light bulb was not invented by a candle maker. Drive yourself to take risks and aim high. Don't worry, you will not "fail" but grow. Live your life at fullest and leave your marks -- it is your turn.

It can be easy to focus on the negative. Instead, I feel that it’s important to teach my students– the scientists who will address tomorrow’s needs– to find joy in frustrations and turn them into an elegant response.

What inspired you to be in the profession you are today?

Born and raised in Turkey, I met theoretical physicist (and interim prime minister) Prof. Erdal İnönü in a bookstore during high school. We often see celebrities as stars in the sky—unreachable, much like STEM for many girls. But meeting a real-life scientist made STEM seem accessible, inspiring me to pursue a BSc in physics. Later, I became Turkey’s first Fulbright Scholar, marking the start of my journey to the USA.

What impact does your research or project have on society?

By my calculations, the quantified value propositions for my technology are the following but not limited to: a) saving ~12M lives per year globally through early breast cancer screening using ultrasound in at-home settings, b) increasing survival rates up to 98% by detecting breast cancer in early stage via frequent screenings, c) reducing health care spending by 50% (~$20 B/year) as a result of early-stage detection. These calculations assume the capture of tumors at stage 0/1, and cancer spending based on 2020 figures without adjusting for yearly increase. 

What is one surprising fact about your research or project that people might not know?

My journey into scientific innovation has been deeply personal, driven by the diseases and tragedies that have touched my family and friends. The inspiration for my soft, wearable ultrasound imaging bra/patch came during my aunt’s battle with stage 4 interval breast cancer. Together, we sketched a device that would allow women to conduct breast scans at home. This vision fueled my academic journey, transforming a simple sketch into reality.

What’s the most exciting moment you've experienced over the course of your research or project?

A turning point in my research came when I was selected for the MIT Future Founders Prize Competition for my research on the ultrasound bra for early breast cancer detection. This initiative supports top female faculty entrepreneurs at MIT through a strong network of senior mentors in translating technologies to users. This accolade emphasized the importance of moving from lab-based prototypes to real-world applications, a central theme in my work.