A bra that detects breast cancer

Early detection is key when it comes to tackling breast cancer but getting screened more than once a year can be impractical, especially for women under 40.

Now, one medical company hopes to make spotting tumors as easy as getting dressed in the morning. The First Warning System is a “smart bra” designed to catch cancer far before it becomes noticeable to mammograms. Since it would be easy to slip on and could presumably be worn at least a few times a week, having frequent breast cancer screenings wouldn’t even require a trip to the doctor’s office.

The bra, which is lined with extremely precise sensors, measures changes in cell temperature. Such changes are created by blood vessel growth, which can indicate a developing tumor. The data collected by the bra is then processed by software that uses an algorithm to make sense of the changes and determine whether or not a tumor could be growing.

The idea of a breast cancer-detecting bra may sound farfetched, but preliminary clinical studies for the First Warning System have had favorable results. In one trial of more than 650 women, the smart bra accurately detected tumors 92.1 percent of the time.

If more clinical trials file suit, the bra, which will cost around $1,000, could be ready for commercialization in Europe early next year and in the United States in 2014.

[via Medgadget via MedCity News]

Image, Video: First Warning Systems

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com