Speaker
Mr
Benjamin Frisch
(CERN and Technische Universität Wien)
Description
Breast cancer is among the most frequent cancer types for women. The average life-time risk is about one eighth. As early detection leads to high cure rates, breast cancer screening is a priority in healthcare policies. However, conventional methods like X-ray mammography and echography show lesions but lack specificity. Additionally, those techniques are based on tissue density differences that complicate diagnosis in the case of dense breasts. It is thus important to provide additional means for early detection.
The Crystal Clear Collaboration developed a positron emission tomograph for mammography, the ClearPEM. It is based on LYSO:Ce crystals read out on both sides with avalanche photodiodes. This allows measuring the depth of interaction in the crystals with a precision of 2 mm and contributes to good spatial resolution and high sensitivity. Trials on the prototype confirm a spatial resolution of 1.3 mm.
For ClearPEM-Sonic, this performance is expected to improve as the light yield of the crystals has been increased by 20% whilst keeping the same depth of interaction and energy resolution.
Yet, the main objective is to improve diagnosis by combining metabolic information from ClearPEM with morphological and anatomical information from a new-generation ultrasonic transducer that objectively quantifies tissue elasticity, developed by SuperSonic Imagine.
The main challenge of combining both modalities is, aside from the mechanical integration, the fusion of both images to guarantee excellent mapping precision. This has been solved by immobilizing the breast and providing information about the position of both images in space via a combination of fiducial markers and high-precision positioning devices.
ClearPEM-Sonic is a CERIMED project with CERN as a partner.
E-mail address
benjamin.frisch@cern.ch
Telephone
+41 22 767 3457
Last Name
Frisch
First Name(s)
Benjamin
Please submit a short bio (max 1500 characters)
Benjamin Armand FRISCH studied Technical Physics at the Technical University of Vienna. In parallel, he worked as a Quality Assurance Manager at Siemens PSE on medical software projects. He received his Master Degree in 2007, after research on scintillating crystals for nuclear medicine applications at CERN.
Since 2007 he writes his PhD in Technical Physics as a doctoral student at CERN on the ClearPEM-Sonic project, a combined positron emission mammograph and ultrasound scanner.
Institution
CERN
Address
CH-1211 Geneva 23
Author
Mr
Benjamin Frisch
(CERN and Technische Universität Wien)
Co-authors
Dr
Etiennette Auffray
(CERN)
Dr
Paul Lecoq
(CERN)