Nowadays different techniques to diagnose breast cancer are available even if some negative aspects like the costs, the request of trained staff, long waiting test and the non-applicability to all women must be taken into consideration. Mammography, despite being the gold standard of diagnostic techniques, cannot be used on pregnant women because of ionizing radiations. This technique is also ineffective in young dense breasts. (Nover, Jagtap, Anjum, Yegingil, Shih and Brooks, “Modern Breast Cancer Detection: A Technological Review,” International Journal of Biomedical Imaging, no. 902326, 2009 https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbi/2009/902326/)
The devices based on the differences in mechanical properties between the lumps and the surrounding tissue, as the self-palpation method, are generally used for the Clinical Breast-Examination (CBE) by physician to perform their work and are not wearable [1]. Wearable solutions, shown in Figure 1, to support the BSE are instead based on thermal imaging, based on the assumption of the different metabolic activity, and thus the different heat production of tumors respect to healthy tissues [2].
Figure 1 - Existing solutions