From the first moment my wife discovered
she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even
ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have
received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for
answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The
following entry appeared on my birthday in 2013.
When I think of
microwaving something, I usually think of popcorn or my lunch, NOT how
microwaves might be used to track the progress of tumor shrinkage during
chemotherapy.
But that’s exactly
what doctors used it for in a recent study and unlike traditional methods like
x-ray mammography and ultrasound, they’ve discovered that microwaves tuned to
very particular frequencies seem to pass through surround tissue and only
resonate with the tumor. This gives a much, much clearer image of the tumor and
therefore allows doctors to measure more accurately what’s going on inside the
breast without having to invade it with needles or biopsies.
Why is this
significant?
“1) its low
cost and portability, especially relative to MRI and X-ray computed
tomography (CT);
2) its use of safe
nonionizing radiation;
3) its ability to
image bulk electrical properties as a feature of tissue that is not imaged by
most other modalities;
4) its ability, without
the use of contrast agents, to quantitatively reconstruct
frequency-dependent permittivity and conductivity profiles of living tissue as
a way of identifying physiological conditions of those tissues.
“One possible
application of MWT is in the frequent monitoring of tissue for the early
detection of disease. For example, there is evidence to suggest that up to 22%
of breast cancers detected by repeated mammographic screening naturally regress
[1], and the ability to monitor these cancers with nonionizing radiation would
be very useful. Significant progress in microwave imaging has been made in the
last decade, with experimental prototypes having been used for the imaging
of...breast tumors [4]. In addition, promising pilot studies for human breast
imaging have been completed [5], [6].”
When the tumor is
struck by microwaves at a certain frequency, it conducts electricity in a
particular way. When the microwaves are captured on the other side, a computer
looks at the differences in electrical conductivity AND CREATES AN IMAGE THAT
IS CLEARER THAN USING OTHER METHODS!
The real plus here
is that there is no danger of radiation. It doesn’t cost as much. It’s easier
to carry this type of microwave unit around than it is to carry x-ray equipment
or a an MRI machine (possibly making regular breast cancer screening MUCH MORE
ACCESSIBLE to the rest of the women in the world!), and last of all, there’s no
need to inject chemicals in order to see the tumor better in other imaging
systems.
Promising, eh?
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