There are both medical and technical motivations for this research.

Medical Motivation: Some Facts

• 1 in 9 women will develop breast cancer during a lifetime, and 39% of these people will die as a result.
• In Canada, the disease is the most common form of cancer that affects women, and the second leading cause of death.
• It is the number one killer of Canadian women in the prime of life (35-54), and it results in the most lost years of life among Canadian women.

Technical Motivation: Ultrasound Can Provide an Adjunct to Mammography

• Problems of X-ray Mammography
  • An estimated 10-15% of breast cancers evade detection by mammography
  • Poor differentiation of malignant tumors from highly common cysts (while ultrasound can do so with accuracies of 90-100%)
  • Mammography poorly images dense breast tissue, resulting in many false-negative results among women under the age of 35
• UCT can provide not only structural/density information, but also tissue compressibility and speed of sound maps
• Ultrasound directivity patterns have the potential to help pinpoint tissue lesions