Slater Center for Interactive Technologies teams with NUWC to apply military imaging technology to mammography for early detection of breast cancer
Slater Technology Fund Press Release
May 29, 2001
(Providence, RI) With seed funding and business development support from the Slater Center for Interactive Technologies, a computer engineer at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) is developing the next generation of digital mammography software – using sonar techniques originally developed by the military to detect underwater mines. The collaboration marks the first time that NUWC technology has been commercialized in Rhode Island.
According to principal investigator Michael J. Duarte, the challenges of detecting mines and diagnosing breast cancer are surprisingly similar. “A mine is a very small feature that is often not obvious in a large and ambiguous acoustic image. Similarly, a microcalcification is a very small feature in a mammogram that often is masked by dense surrounding breast tissue. The problem is finding these subtle features and enhancing them to a degree where they become visibly recognizable to an expert radiologist.”
"Funding the development or re-application of technology with the potential to create an order-of-magnitude benefit – in this case, creating a new class of software tools for radiologists to use in early detection of a deadly disease – is exactly where Slater Interactive should be," said executive director Thorne Sparkman. "These grants are equivalent to bets that talented researchers in world class research environments can build software that revolutionizes radiology, as much as radiology first revolutionized medicine."
Duarte has been researching the application of signal and image processing techniques to mammography for five years – working in collaboration with Alan Semine, MD, a radiologist at Boston’s Faulkner Hospital, who contributes expertise in image interpretation and related issues. Their research has been supported by NUWC under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), a technology transfer initiative that assists and encourages the investigation of application of military technology to non-military commercial uses. Duarte and Semine’s startup company – Advanced Image Enhancement, Inc. – recently entered into a second CRADA with NUWC and Slater Interactive, which is contributing $30,000 in grant funding through NUWC, and is making a direct, $45,000 equity investment as well.
“The current medical screening standard is the traditional analog film mammogram, produced from x-rays,” Dr. Semine explains. “The films are mounted on a light source and visually inspected for abnormalities by a radiologist. A variety of factors – the expertise and thoroughness of the physician, the clarity of detail in the image, and the presence of dense breast tissue – can mask subtle abnormal features in the mammogram, leaving cancer in the earliest stages undetected.”
The next generation of mammograms will be digital images read directly on a computer monitor – and that’s where the NUWC technology comes in. “Our current ability to enhance the image on the monitor is relatively limited,” says Semine. “The need for developing software tools that the radiologist can use at the monitor to enhance the perception of detail and contrast is very real, and the technology developed at NUWC can make that possible.”
First Rhode Island commercialization of NUWC technology
According to Christopher L. Bergstrom, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council, Slater Interactive’s watershed collaboration with NUWC is an important achievement in maximizing Rhode Island’s position as a world-class research and development center. “With a globally respected, multimillion dollar research enterprise and 2,000 highly specialized engineers working on Aquidneck Island, NUWC offers extraordinary technology transfer opportunities for Rhode Island,” says Bergstrom. “The Policy Council encourages our Slater Centers, as well as the state’s colleges and universities, to facilitate the commercialization of cutting-edge military technology developed there.”
“Coupling the technical strength of NUWC with the entrepreneurship of the Slater Centers creates dynamic opportunities for Rhode Island in a number of high tech economic sectors,” says Dr. Richard H. Nadolink, NUWC’s Chief Technology Officer.