Digital optical tomography system for dynamic breast imaging

Diffuse optical tomography has shown promising results as a tool for breast cancer screening and monitoring response to chemotherapy. Dynamic imaging of the transient response of the breast to an external stimulus, such as pressure or a respiratory maneuver, can provide additional information that can be used to detect tumors. We present a new digital continuous-wave optical tomography system designed to simultaneously image both breasts at fast frame rates and with a large number of sources and detectors. The system uses a master-slave digital signal processor-based detection architecture to achieve a dynamic range of 160 dB and a frame rate of 1.7 Hz with 32 sources, 64 detectors, and 4 wavelengths per breast. Included is a preliminary study of one healthy patient and two breast cancer patients showing the ability to identify an invasive carcinoma based on the hemodynamic response to a breath hold.