by
Robert Garment, Executive Editor | March 31, 2006
"The choice of a particular route to going digital in mammography is a function of many things - image quality, patient comfort, workflow, connectivity, economics..." said Rob Cascella, President and COO of Hologic, a sponsor of the Advanced Image Enhancement project. "For mammographers the most important variable is the quality of the digital images. Finding breast cancer early and correctly diagnosing the problem is what mammography is all about. By helping radiologists see the region of interest better in patients with dense breasts, the AIE software has the potential to be beneficial in the early and accurate detection of breast cancer."
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women except for skin cancer.1 It is second only to lung cancer as the most common cause of death among women. According to the U.S. Cancer Statistics: 2002 Incidence and Mortality report, which includes incidence data for about 93% of the U.S. population and mortality data for the entire country, more than 180,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, and more than 41,000 died from the disease. In 2004, an estimated 215,990 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed among women. Seventy-five percent of all diagnosed cases of breast cancer are among women aged 50 years or older.
Mammography is the best available method to detect breast cancer in its earliest, most treatable stage-- an average of 1 to 4 years before a woman can feel a lump. Women aged 40 years or older should have a screening mammogram every 1 to 2 years.
About Advance Image Enhancement, Inc.
Advanced Image Enhancement (AIE), the Providence, Rhode Island based software company, produces image-processing tools for the medical imaging industry. AIE's core technology evolved from proprietary United States Navy signal and image processing software utilized for the detection, classification and localization of undersea mines. AIE holds the exclusive license to this technology from the Navy. The Company is utilizing the Navy technology as the baseline to develop image processing algorithms for enhancing digital mammograms with plans to expand into applications in chest x-rays and orthopedics and other image modalities including ultrasound and MRI.
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