TECHNOLOGY

BiopsyScan™ Breast Biopsy

Today, when patients get a breast biopsy, they don’t get the results of this biopsy until the results come back from the central lab. Depending upon the health care system, this can take 10 days or longer. Moreover, there are other issues. Pathology is exceptionally good at identifying normal tissue or advanced cancers. However, breast biopsies are small and it can be difficult to make determinations between atypia and DICS (early stage breast cancer), and the error rate when differentiating between the two is around 30%. Finally, when cancer is detected, positive biopsies are often sent off for genetic assessment to inform on cancer aggressiveness, which takes a few weeks.

BiopsyScan™ can change all of this. Radiologists can insert biopsy samples into the small device and get instantaneous assessments of whether a biopsy contains cancer, so patients can be informed before they even leave the radiology suite. This can also provide information to inform pathology, and BiopsyScan™ also informs on aggressiveness. It does this point of care.

NovaScan has completed a small study with a BiopsyScan™ prototype; the results were perfect.