Earthquake engineering meets breast cancer screening

How can swaying buildings help diagnose breast cancer? Katy Gosset meets a team of engineers taking inspiration from earthquake engineering to design a new, cost-effective device to help detect breast cancer. Listen to find out how the device works, and how it could help more women get tested sooner.

Every year, more than 3,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the Cancer Society.

Eligible women aged between 45 and 69 can get free mammograms, but younger women must decide whether to fund the test themselves.

Researchers might have found a cost-effective way to screen for breast cancer earlier than we do now. Their inspiration? Earthquake engineering.

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"When you're looking at the motion of buildings, you can identify the underlying ground tissue properties," says Dr Jessica Fitzjohn from the University of Canterbury. "By looking at those vibrations, you can know what the soil properties are underneath."

So, why not apply that same concept to breast tissue?

The team have developed a low-cost tool that applies a small vibration and analyses the resulting surface motion. Cancerous tissue is around 4-10 times stiffer than healthy tissue.

The hope is that this device will give more New Zealand women early access to breast screening.

Senior producer Katy Gosset pays a visit to the research team to find out more.

To learn more:

Listen to other episodes from the Our Changing World catalogue on treating and detecting cancer, including this 2022 episode on new cancer immunotherapies and this 2021 episode on medical detection dogs trained to sniff out cancer.

Katy Gosset previously spoke to Professor Geoff Chase about his work with student engineer Francis Pooke on designing a new device that helps tracheostomy efficiency.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details