Regular ultrasound scans can help identify tumors early in those who are at high risk of breast cancer.
The acquisition and processing module of the new device, which is slightly bigger than a smartphone, is connected to a tiny ultrasound probe. When connected to a laptop, this device enables real-time reconstruction and viewing of wide-angle 3D images on the go.
Everything is more compact, and that can make it easier to be used in rural areas or for people who may have barriers to this kind of technology.
Canan Dagdeviren, Study Senior Author and Associate Professor, Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
According to her, this technology can detect more tumors earlier, increasing the likelihood of effective treatment.
The study’s lead authors are Colin Marcus, PhD’25, and Md Osman Goni Nayeem, a former MIT postdoc.
Other authors of the study include MIT graduate students Aastha Shah, Jason Hou, and Shrihari Viswanath; Maya Eusebio, an MIT summer intern and University of Central Florida undergraduate; David Sadat, an MIT Media Lab Research Specialist; Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT Provost; and Tolga Ozmen, a breast cancer surgeon from Massachusetts General Hospital.
Frequent Monitoring
Although X-rays are used in routine mammograms to detect many breast malignancies, tumors can form between annual mammograms. Twenty to thirty percent of all occurrences of breast cancer are interval cancers, which are often more aggressive than those discovered during routine examinations.
Early detection of these tumors is essential since breast cancer has a nearly 100 % survival rate when detected in its earliest stages. That percentage, however, falls to about 25 % for tumors found in later stages.
For certain people, routine mammograms combined with more frequent ultrasound monitoring might increase the frequency of tumors found early. Nowadays, ultrasound is often used only as a follow-up if a mammogram shows suspicious regions. The large, costly ultrasound devices used for this purpose require operation by highly skilled professionals.
You need skilled ultrasound technicians to use those machines, which is a major obstacle to getting ultrasound access to rural communities, or to developing countries where there aren’t as many skilled radiologists.
Shrihari Viswanath, Graduate Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The MIT team aims to increase the number of individuals who can get regular ultrasound scanning by developing portable and user-friendly ultrasound equipment.
Dagdeviren and her colleagues created a flexible patch in 2023 that could be fastened to a bra. The patch features a variety of ultrasonic transducers that enable the wearer to move an ultrasound tracker across the patch and scan breast tissue from various perspectives.
A 3D representation of the tissue could be created by combining those 2D images, but small coverage gaps could cause minor abnormalities to go unnoticed. Additionally, to examine the images, that array of transducers needed to be linked to a conventional, expensive, refrigerator-sized processing unit.
The goal of the researchers’ latest study was to design a totally portable modified ultrasound array that could scan just two or three spots to provide a 3D image of the entire breast.
The new technology they created is a chirped data acquisition system (cDAQ), which comprises an ultrasound probe and a motherboard that analyzes data. The probe, which is a little smaller than a deck of cards, has an ultrasound array shaped like an empty square, allowing it to capture 3D images of the tissue beneath.
This data is processed by the motherboard, which is slightly bigger than a smartphone and only costs around $300 to manufacture. All of the electronics on the motherboard are commercially available. To view the images, connect the motherboard to a laptop, making the entire system portable.
Traditional 3D ultrasound systems require power expensive and bulky electronics, which limits their use to high-end hospitals and clinics. By redesigning the system to be ultra-sparse and energy-efficient, this powerful diagnostic tool can be moved out of the imaging suite and into a wearable form factor that is accessible for patients everywhere.
Anantha Chandrakasan, Provost, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This technology also consumes far less power than a standard ultrasound machine, allowing it to be powered by a 5V DC source (a battery or an AC/DC adaptor used to connect small electronic devices like modems or portable speakers).
“Ultrasound imaging has long been confined to hospitals. To move ultrasound beyond the hospital setting, we reengineered the entire architecture, introducing a new ultrasound fabrication process, to make the technology both scalable and practical,” Md Osman Goni Nayeem added.
Earlier Diagnosis
The researchers put the novel technique to the test on one human subject, a 71-year-old woman who had previously had breast cysts. They discovered that the method could precisely scan cysts and generate a 3D representation of the tissue with no gaps.
The technology can see as far as 15 cm into the tissue and can image the whole breast from two or three angles. And because the ultrasound instrument lies on the skin rather than being forced into the tissue like a traditional ultrasound probe, the images are not distorted.
“With our technology, you simply place it gently on top of the tissue, and it can visualize the cysts in their original location and with their original sizes,” Dagdeviren added.
The study team is currently undertaking a larger clinical trial at the MIT Center for Clinical and Translational Research and MGH.
The researchers are also developing a smaller version of the data processing machine, roughly the size of a fingernail. They want to connect this to a smartphone, which will be used to visualize the photos, making the entire system smaller and more user-friendly. They also intend to create a smartphone app that will employ an AI system to direct the patient to the ideal position to insert the ultrasound probe.
The researchers believe that in the future, a smaller version of the device may be integrated into a wearable sensor that patients at high risk of getting breast cancer can use at home, even if the current version could easily be modified for use in a doctor’s office.
Journal Reference:
Marcus, C., et.al. (2026) Real-Time 3D Ultrasound Imaging with an Ultra-Sparse, Low Power Architecture. Advanced Healthcare Materials. DOI: 10.1002/adhm.202505310.