Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Could Hair be Used to Detect Breast Cancer?

Filed under: in the news...

The Australian company Fermiscan is developing a test that can potentially identify a patient with breast cancer using just 20 or so strands of hair.

The new test bombards the hair samples with x-rays, which creates a diffraction pattern. The hair from patients with breast cancer more often than not will produce a distinctly different x-ray diffraction pattern than hair from cancer-free patients.

The company hopes that their test can supplement the current gold-standards of mammography and ultrasound. In addition, if the test is sensitive enough it can help avoid unnecessary biopsies.

Read the press release here...

Fermiscan company page...

Image: Fermiscan hair x-ray showing ring present in fiber diffraction pattern.

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