From the May 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


In a prototype of the MUT system, the images are acquired while a woman lies on the table with her breast suspended in a water bath. The scan takes 12 minutes per breast but can be shortened as the technology improves, says the inventor.

Marmarelis’ work on MUT began more than a decade ago, when his wife had her first mammogram, an experience she found to be uncomfortable. His wife’s experience pushed him to find a way to detect possible breast lesions early, without radiation or discomfort.


“Mammography has low sensitivity and low specificity,” says Marmarelis. “Giving women a test that’s inadequate and uses ionizing radiation is not something I can accept.”

Like TechniScan, Marmarelis employs transmission ultrasound in his device and exploits the extracted additional information to reconstruct a 3-D set of multimodal images of the breast, which are combined to achieve a diagnosis.

“Transmission mode is essentially emulating what is done with X-rays in CT but instead of using X-rays, we use ultrasonic pulses. This is why I refer to it as ultrasound tomography,” says Marmarelis. “A version of this idea was initially tried at Mayo Clinic in the 1970s but was later abandoned because of the mixed results obtained at the time, probably due to limitations in technology.”

Although TechniScan also uses the transmission mode, Marmarelis says the two technologies “differ fundamentally in scanning and data analysis methods.”

Marmarelis is eager to prove the claims of MUT’s capabilities through additional clinical trials. But like many startup innovators in the United States, the cost of the process is a challenge.

About seven years ago, Marmarelis attempted to initiate a clinical study in the U.S. but within a year, realized that the necessary time and money exceeded his resources – he would need at least a couple of million dollars and have to undergo a lengthy regulatory process to complete an initial set of about 100 cases.

But a more feasible alternative was available in his native Greece. “I have many childhood friends who are now professors of medicine in the University of Athens,” he says.

Marmarelis joined forces with his Greek peers and was able to carry out a clinical study at a fraction of the cost required in the U.S. The study continues today and supplied the results of the 32 cases that he presented on at ECR. “I would like to expand the clinical trials,” says Marmarelis.

With connections in places such as the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, he hopes to enroll more women into trials in other European nations.

May 2011 Magazine

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