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Mammograms can be painful. Biopsies are invasive. And MRIs take time. Research Assistant Professor  just received a three-year $441,780 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop his magnetic particle imaging (MPI) prototype, which uses noninvasive techniques to detect nanoparticles—markers for breast cancer tumors.

“It has many favorable properties. … It can be much more sensitive, it is fast, definitely faster than an MRI, it’s nontoxic, and unlike CT scans or X-rays, there’s no ionizing radiation,” Tonyushkin said. “It does use tracers, so a tracer has to be injected into the subject, [but] these tracers are quite natural—it’s iron oxide. So in a sense, this is a fancy metal detector.”

Tonyushkin says MPI is rather new, with only two commercial companies developing imaging machines that to this point can only accommodate mice. Tonyushkin, who is also working with mice, says scaling what’s in research and development up to the size needed for human subjects would require a lot of electric power and huge magnets, but the promise is too great to give up on MPI just yet.

“In my technique, which is quite unique, apart from others, you lie down on a table and you don’t know that there’s a scanner underneath. It’s potentially cheaper and there’s less power consumption required,” Tonyushkin said.

Tonyushkin, who is also the director of the physics teaching labs at UMass Boston, says when it comes right down to it, his technique promises to be cheaper, faster, and safer. It will take two minutes to do an exam.

“A breast cancer application would be ideal for many reasons,” Tonyushkin said. “These days the techniques for biopsies are very invasive and harmful because radioactive or toxic tracers are used. X-ray mammography works well but there is a certain population of women for whom mammography is not effective because of the density of their breast tissue. MRIs take a half-hour to an hour, and it’s not something every hospital can do.”

Tonyushkin’s background is in experimental atomic physics. He previously worked as an MRI physicist at Massachusetts General Hospital. While there, he thought, there has to be a better way.

Tonyushkin says MPI requires an interdisciplinary approach, so he’s working with Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology Shailja Pathania, biochemists at UMass Medical School, and radiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition this funded project allows active participation by undergraduate and graduate students, which ensures training future biomedical imaging scientists.

At the end of the National Institutes of Health grant Tonyushkin hopes to have images from mice with breast tumors, giving him a proof of concept. With future grants, he envisions developing a full-scale apparatus that’s readily translatable to humans.