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Elastography - Light Compression and Accurate Imaging
Now, watch what happens when we press on the top with a plastic spoon: (see next page)
Pam Stephan
Elastography combines the latest in ultrasonic imaging technology with the oldest form of breast-cancer detection: touch. When a woman or her doctor presses on breast tissue to feel for unusual lumps, she touches the breast with a small amount of force. This force causes the breast structure to move in a characteristic way. The technical term for the way a solid moves in response to a force is called elasticity. If you have ever felt a breast with a cancerous tumor above a certain size, you know that the tumor usually feels like a hard, inflexible lump, almost like a rock or a peach pit. Scientists say that cancerous tumors have very low elasticity - they do not change shape readily when pressed. It is this property that enables elastography to work.
Kitchen Science Demonstration
To explain how elastography works, we went into the kitchen and made a four-layer Jell-O ® mold - orange, lime, lemon, and strawberry flavors, all with different colors. We put an almond between the lemon and strawberry layers to represent a hard object such as a tumor.
When we took the gelatin out of the mold and set it on a plate, the layers made nice straight flat lines:
