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Place ENS Paris-Saclay, Amphi d'Alembert (1Z18)
Mechanics and materials - Challenges in breast imaging
Abstract
Breast cancer is the most common cancer and the one that causes the most deaths in women. The mortality rate is decreasing year after year thanks to screening which allows early diagnosis and also thanks to improved treatments.
The imaging modality used in the first line of screening is X-ray mammography, sometimes complemented by ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. As a soft tissue organ, the breast is extremely deformable, which poses a range of problems for comparing images at different times or with different imaging systems.
The development of numerical simulation methods and digital data processing opens up the possibility of modelling the behaviour of complex objects in terms of their mechanical properties and opens up new clinical applications to help doctors make faster and more accurate diagnoses.
Physicists, on the other hand, are trying to use these numerical approaches to model the breast realistically, both statically and dynamically, but also to simulate image acquisition systems in order to optimise their design.