Introduction:

Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of death in American women today. A woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer approximately every two minutes. Out of the roughly 270,000 cases that are diagnosed every year, about 212,000 are new cases of invasive breast cancer, about 58,000 are non-invasive, and around 40,000 die per year. The frequency of breast cancer incidence has increased from 1 in 20 to 1 in 8 from 1960 to the present day.

While these statistics seem grim, a woman can greatly increase her chances of survival and treatment effectiveness by early detection. This site discusses the limitations of current methods and some of the novel approaches that the Bio-MEMS and Nanotechnology research spheres have contributed to breast-cancer detection.