LSU team gets patent for cancer detection method

LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy Associate Professor Joyoni Dey and colleagues in the J. Bennett Johnston, Sr. Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices, or CAMD, Department of Chemistry and Department of Physics & Astronomy, received a U.S. patent issued for “Phase-Contrast X-Ray Interferometry,” U.S. Patent No. 10872708.
The patent features Dey as the primary inventor of a method that could help clinicians improve breast cancer detection without the expensive absorbing analyzer typically required for X-ray interferometers.
“This way, the amount of radiation, or dose, can be lowered to that equivalent of conventional mammography," Dey said.
"Note that phase-contrast X-ray provides phase as well as small-angle scatter information, which sets it apart from conventional x-ray attenuation images. These multiple modalities obtained with the same dose in a single scan will provide tremendous clinical benefits and may help doctors better detect and locate breast cancer with more specificity."
Dey and Ph.D. graduate Jingzhu Xu investigated the concept in simulations.
Dey, her graduate students and co-investigator Assistant Professor-Research Kyungmin Ham at CAMD are further pursuing the idea in the context of breast cancer mammography with support from the National Institutes of Health Trail-blazer R21 grant titled, “Breast Cancer Detection and Imaging using Analyzer-less X-ray Interferometry,” which Dey was awarded in July 2020.