A University of Arkansas scientist has developed a technology that
makes undersea mud as clear as water, revealing deadly land mines. Now,
she’s adapting the technique to detect a type of biological land mine
– breast-cancer tumors.
Magda El-Shenawee, an associate professor of electrical engineering,
is adapting her rough-surface computational analysis — which, put very
simply, is an algorithm that models dirt — to detect breast tissue
cells that have gone awry. It turns out seeing through dirt is not so
different from seeing through breast tissue.
"Sometimes … diverse problems have more in common than you might think," El-Shenawee said.
Tracy Powell