One of the gifts of metastatic breast cancer (yes, advanced cancer can bear gifts if one is willing to find and open them) is no more mammograms!
I get CT and bone scanes now, neither of which involve squishing my 3D boob into a 2D flat disc. However CT scans are not a breast cancer detection option for healthy people. Mammography, the squishing technology, remains the gold standard for detecting and diagnosing breast cancer. Yet it’s also one of those cancer detection procedures, like a colonoscopy, that can be unpleasant. People agree to them because they support the ultimate goal of maintaining good health, though I’m sure many others avoid them because they anticipate and fear discomfort.
Memo to people who avoid mamograms and colonoscopies:
They are not unbearable and they beat the alternative of weeks, months, or years of being a cancer patient.
Memo to the medical industry from people everywhere:
Please add patient comfort to your feature list.
Meanwhile, meet a company that apparently got the memo: iSono Health.
iSono Health: A company that young women especially should know
I came across iSono Health a couple years ago and had a conversation with Founder / CEO Maryam Ziaei. She founded the company in 2015 with Shadi Saberi, an electrical and computing engineer who led development of the company’s ultrasound system and hardware architecture for the product that they named ATUSA and describe as:
“The world’s first portable and automated 3D breast ultrasound scanner.”
They also include “AI-driven” (Artificial Intelligence) as part of the description, but with the disclaimer that AI features are still in the research phase and will be used for investigational purposes only.
iSono Health expected to launch ATUSA in 2020, until a certain global pandemic got in the way. In May of 2022, the company announced that the FDA had cleared the ATUSA™ System for breast imaging. FDA clearance is a big and necessary hurdle, so this is great news.
The breast imaging device you can wear
Wearables are a growing trend in health care, with popular consumer devices like the Apple Watch and FitBit allowing people to monitor all kinds of health indicators. ATUSA is not a wearable like that, nor is it a consumer device.
Andrea Park from Fierce Biotech described the iSono wearable Atusa system as looking like “the high-tech inverse of Madonna’s infamous cone bra, which was my first impression too! Though I’m pretty sure Jean Paul Gaultier (the designer of said cone bra) was not consulted on this product, but looks really don’t matter. What does matter and what does make ATUSA a medical marvel is the ingenious concept of a bra-like breast imaging device.
The benefits of ATUSA breast scanning
For the patient:
- No squishing
- Speed: scanning the entire breast takes only about a minute per side.
- You could only have to travel as far as your local doctor’s office.
When I spoke with Maryam, she mentioned the possibility of using the device in private tents at breast cancer events like 5k runs, which is so practical and potentially life-saving.
For doctors and clinics / medical offices:
- Another tool in the breast imaging toolkit for young women and women with small / dense breasts.
- No hefty price tag or installation requirements. No assembly required!
- The system doesn’t need a specially trained technician to operate it.
For society and the future of healthcare:
- A tool that will make breast cancer detection and diagnosis more accessible and affordable to all, especially underserved communities and populations.
Caveats and disclaimers
- The ALTUSA breast imaging system is not suitable or effective for everyone.
- It is not a replacement for mammography.
- It’s only just been FDA-approved and will take time to go on-market.
Nonetheless, it’s an exciting new tool in the breast imaging toolkit that will help young women, small-breasted women, and women with dense breast tissue.
The more breast cancer detection and diagnosis options we have—especially options that are less costly and bring screening closer to the patient—the better equipped we will be to continue thie fight breast cancer, one of the leading causes of death for women worldwide.
Learn more about ATUSA and iSono health at the company website: https://isonohealth.com/