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UNE develops more accurate tools for breast cancer diagnosis

October 24, 2006

CancerResearch.thumb.JPGResearch at The University of New England is developing new, more accurate tools for diagnosing breast cancer that could involve fewer biopsies and lower exposure to x-rays.

Using a technique called “small-angle x-ray scattering”, the researchers have been able to achieve a diagnostic success rate of over 95 per cent. This is much better than the success rates of more conventional techniques: between 70 per cent and 90 per cent.

The technique is similar to that used in determining the structure of DNA, providing resolution to a level almost fine enough to distinguish individual molecules. This and another technique – “second-harmonic generation imaging” – are allowing the researchers to study the structure and distribution of collagen, the protein that holds vital clues to the presence of cancer.

Greg Falzon is working towards a doctorate at UNE. One of his supervisors – Dr Sarah Pearson – is a physicist, and the other – Dr Bob Murison – is a statistician. It is the combination of powerful new physical and statistical techniques that is the secret of the new diagnostic tools. This combination has also enabled Mr Falzon to develop a computer-based method – to be used in a surgical setting – for determining the boundaries of a breast tumour and estimating the probability of the tissue being malignant.

Mr Falzon and Dr Pearson have travelled frequently to the Daresbury synchrotron radiation source in the UK to conduct experiments involving x-ray scattering, while Dr Pearson travels to the University of Sydney to conduct the second-harmonic generation imaging. They are among only a handful of people world-wide who are using this technology for biological research. “Techniques developed in other fields are now proving very useful in medicine,” Dr Pearson said. “Our work is contributing to the research capability of Australia’s own synchrotron, now under construction.” They have also carried out experiments at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation facility at Lucas Heights in Sydney.

Their extended research network includes medical practitioners such as surgeons and pathologists, academics and research students – some of them in the New England region, and others throughout Australia and overseas. The project is funded by the Australian Research Council.

Mr Falzon explained that the accuracy of the diagnostic tools he has developed, if combined with progress in clinical imaging technology, could mean that far fewer biopsies would be necessary. “Studies in the United States have shown that 75 per cent of core-needle biopsies for breast cancer diagnosis did not indicate cancer,” he said. “In hindsight, researchers say that these biopsies would have been unnecessary if better screening and diagnostic technology had been available. This figure of 75 per cent amounts to excess biopsies being performed on more than half a million women in the United States each year.

“The research community wants a secondary screening procedure so that, when a suspicious lesion is found on a mammogram, the lesion can be assessed and a decision made on whether a biopsy should be performed.”

Incorporating powerful new statistical techniques available at UNE, Mr Falzon is developing software that can generate enough information on collagen structure to allow successful diagnosis after only minimal exposure to x-rays. “I’m aiming at an exposure time of 45 seconds, rather than the exposure times of up to an hour currently required by this imaging technique,” he said.

The research is also extending to the diagnosis of brain cancer. “We’ve discovered a series of unique signatures for cancer that are detectable in the brain by the use of small-angle x-ray scattering,” Mr Falzon said.

Earlier this month, he presented a talk on his research to members of the New South Wales Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia, meeting at the University of NSW in Sydney. The meeting was the first of its kind in the Branch’s history, as Mr Falzon delivered his talk from UNE via a video-conferencing link. The Branch President, Caro-Anne Badcock, who travelled to Armidale for the event, said she had been “extremely impressed” by Mr Falzon’s presentation, and hoped that similar events in the future would “get this sort of information out across the country”.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows (from left) Dr Bob Murison, Caro-Anne Badcock, Greg Falzon, and Dr Sarah Pearson.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at October 24, 2006 10:43 AM