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Hyperthermia is a promising method to enhance chemo-or radiation therapy of breast cancer and the time-temperature profile in the target and surrounding areas is the primary monitoring method. Unlike with thermal ablation of lesions, in hyperthermia there are not good alternative treatment monitoring quantities. However, there is less problem with non-monotonic thermal coefficients of speed of sound used with ultrasonic imaging of temperature. This paper tests a long discussed but little investigated method of imaging temperature using speed of sound and proposes methods of reducing edge enhancement artifacts in the temperature image. Normally, when directly using the speed of sound to reconstruct the temperature image around the tumor, there will be an abnormal bipolar edge enhancement along the boundary between two materials with different speeds of sound at a given temperature. This due to partial volume effects and can be diminished by regularized, weighted deconvolution. An initial, manual deconvolution is shown, as well as an EMD (Empirical Mode Decomposition) method. Here we use the continuity and other constraints to choose the coefficient, reprocess the temperature field image and take the mean variations of the temperature in the adjacent pixels as the judgment criteria. Both methods effectively reduce the edge enhancement and produce a more precise image of temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research on multridrug resistance in breast cancer resulting from radiation treatment. Topics covered include the reason patients undergo chemotherapy following radiation treatment, the effects of radiation on cellular activities, and the drugs used for analysis. Research methods used include doxorubicin toxicity assay, cell cycle analysis, and construction of the radioresistant breast cancer subline MCF7/44.

The article discusses research on the use of computers in assessing the risk for breast cancer. Topics covered include breast cancer prevalence and mortality rate, breast cancer prevention methods such as chemoprevention and prophylactic mastectomy, and the risks and benefits of the prevention strategies. Information on the study design is also presented.