DTU Space to Develop Cancer Scanner with English Company

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DTU Space and UK company Kromek have started a collaboration to develop a new advanced scanner that have a huge potential for improving breast cancer diagnosis.

Advanced technology developed for space science often has big potential in other areas.

A new industrial research and development project cooperation between DTU Space and the UK company Kromek Group plc is a good example of that. They are to develop a new type of breast cancer scanner for women.

DTU Space – Denmark’s National Space Institute - are contributing with advanced and very accurate detector technology called 3D CZT that has been developed for high energy space exploration. This technology can detect and characterize high-energy photons from gamma rays in space with high precision.

But the very same technology also find use in medical applications. Here, it can potentially improve the results when scanning women for breast cancer tumors in comparison to current methods based on X-rays.

”We are happy to contribute to something as important as diagnosing and fighting cancer,” said Senior Scientist at DTU Space Irfan Kuvvetli, who is in charge of DTU’s work on the detector system.

”This cooperation with the industry shows the importance of constantly trying to develop new research based technologies and to be open to its potential applications in areas other than space science.”

Small and Complicated Tumor Can be Detected

DTU Space and Kromek - a worldwide supplier of detection technology, focusing on among other things, medical imaging systems – has been awarded DKR 10 million over two years for the project from the European research and development program Eurostars.

"It is exciting that space science technology can be used in the medical field"

Irfan Kuvvetli, Senior Scientist at DTU Space

The scanner to be developed is called a 3D Molecular Breast Imager (3D MBI). The goal of the project is to enable more precise and certain diagnosis of breast cancer tumors than is possible with the X-ray technology being used today.

It will for example be possible to identify small tumors and their position much more accurately than today. Detection will also be more accurate when examining women with high breast tissue density. For those persons, a typical X-ray examination can often not distinguish between what is dense tissue and an actual tumor.

This uncertainty, that might cost lives if a tumor is not revealed in time, can be minimized with the new scanning and detector technology now being developed.

Based on a Prototype Ready for Space Science

DTU Space has already developed prototype photon detectors for space science with support from the European Space Agency, ESA. These detectors include signal processing electronics and specialized algorithms for creating very accurate images based on the gathered photon data.

The new research and development project is based on this technology. And it looks so promising that it caught the interest of Kromek who contacted DTU since the same principles can be used for their breast cancer imaging and detecting systems.

”It is exciting that space science technology can be used in the medical field. And through collaboration with the industry we also look forward to being able to supply equipment based on the technology for a future high-energy mission in space,” said Irfan Kuvvetli.