Trends Affecting Healthcare and Technology for the Future

Kouros Azar, MD

July 26, 2006
CLU - Richter Hall Ahmanson Science Building

45 Million women in the United States are screened for breast cancer each year with 35% referred for a second diagnostic test. X-Ray mammography is the current standard tool, a painful and error prone procedure. You may know someone who had to deal with the trauma of positive results from an X-Ray mammography to discover through the medical investigation that there is no clear answer as to whether the person has cancer or how spread is the cancer. The X-Ray technology is definitively limited in its diagnostic capability and creates a lot of angst in the population of patients having mammograms done.

This presentation describes an interesting hybrid combination of two different physical wave effects to discover cancerous tumors in the breast.  Electromagnetic energy is used to “excite” a tumor, generating acoustic energy, which is then analyzed to pinpoint the tumor location.  Dr. Eisenhart explains the various choices made for distribution of RF energy within a patient’s breast.

Kouros Azar, MD

Kouros Azar, MD is the recipient of 2006 IEEE- Buenaventura Engineer of the Year.  He specializes in plastic, reconstructive, and aesthetic surgery and is also a creative design engineer with inventions of several medical devices. Dr. Azar earned his bachelor’s degree in biomedical and electrical engineering in 1990 and his medical degree in 1995 from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He went on to complete a general surgery residency at the University of Arizona in 2000 and a fellowship in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Utah in 2002. Dr. Azar is an officer of the Buenaventura IEEE EMBS chapter, recipient of the global Best Chapter award in 2005. He is also a member of the executive committee of the world-wide EMBS organization.