Second prize (tie, $2,500): UltraMed Ultrasound
Pennsylvania State University

Cancer experts believe that early detection is the best way to prevent the disease from turning fatal. Yet, despite great advances in cancer research, early detection remains a significant challenge and mortality is still high—in 2006, cancer accounted for 25% of all illness-related deaths.

This Penn State team hopes to bring that number down with UltraMed Ultrasound, an improved ultrasound technology that makes the early detection of cancer easier.

The team, led by materials science PhD student Ioanna Mina and her professor, Susan Trolier-McKinstry, is concentrating initially on the early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer, particularly in women with high breast density. At present, doctors do not use ultrasound for routine breast cancer screening due to a high rate of false-positives (the machine detects cancer when in fact there is none). Mammography is the most popular breast cancer screening procedure, but comes with a major drawback: it fails to produce reliable results for women with dense breast tissue. Using mammography alone, only 55% of women with dense breast tissue and breast cancer are actually found to have the disease, meaning that almost half of all cases slip by undetected.

UltraMed will be able to detect cancer in those types of tissue by upping the ultrasound frequency, which in turn increases the image resolution. Current ultrasound transducers (the part that generates the sound) operate at a frequency of 1-16 MHz; the team’s new transducer will operate between 50 MHz and 1 GHz. At such high resolution, individual cells will be able to be distinguished as benign or cancerous no matter how dense the breast tissue, making early detection possible.

Like many BMEidea projects, this is complex (and promising) technology that will take time to develop. Since winning funding, the team has concentrated on developing a prototype of the transducer array, as well as designing and fabricating second-generation electronic systems for the device. According to Trolier-McKinstry, they are now in the process of testing those systems.

As far as commercialization is concerned, Trolier-McKinstry and Mina are working with Penn State to investigate establishing a start-up company in the area. The company would provide both a means of generating funding for research as well as a vehicle to commercialize the results. The business plan that the team developed for the BMEidea competition is being used as part of the basis for Penn State’s decision. A patent application on the technology was submitted in early May.

Prototype development and commercialization efforts aside, Trolier-McKinstry believes the BMEidea experience has thus far been educational. “As a professor,” she says, “it’s been a great learning experience for me. It’s also given Ioanna a chance to explore beyond the typical the typical bounds of a graduate student in the field of engineering.”