Optical imaging of breast tumor by means of continuous waves.

Early detection of breast cancer is one of the keys to decrease the mortality of this epidemic disease. Since the time that the NIH recommended X-ray mammography for an annual screening for women over 50 years of age (1), the mortality has indeed dramatically reduced (2). However, there are some concerns about the use of X-ray mammography; we consider the X-ray to be an unsatisfactory technique for this screening purpose. X-ray mammography is insensitive to one-fourth of cancer cases and itself is carcinogenic. It does not penetrate dense breasts, and is generally not applied to women under 40 years of age.