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One in 8 women in the United States will develop breast cancer during their lifetime, and more than 40,000 die from the disease annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Early detection and effective treatment are the keys to preventing deaths. Advances by University of Texas at Dallas researchers on multiple fronts show promise for helping detect and monitor the disease more accurately, better assessing women’s risk and attacking treatment-resistant tumors.
Hyperspectral Imaging
UT Dallas engineers are applying artificial intelligence (AI) to imaging technologies to develop advanced tools to identify cancer cells, including noninvasive methods that do not expose patients to radiation or contrast agents.
Hyperspectral imaging (HSI), for example, has the potential to help doctors identify cancerous cells with more accuracy. HSI, originally used in satellite imagery, examines cells under ultraviolet and near-infrared lights at micrometer resolution, producing spectral images as unique as fingerprints. UT Dallas researchers have combined HSI with deep learning, a machine learning technique, to compare images automatically with others in an extensive database and help doctors distinguish between normal and cancerous cells.
After publishing research in 2019 that demonstrated the technology could detect cancer cells in head and...