Imaging sheds light on new economy: Thunder Bay strategizes on commercialising medical research.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: THUNDER BAY

"Seeing is knowing" is not just a trite marketing line for a leading-edge breast screening device being developed in Thunder Bay, but it's a potential lifesaver for people at high risk for cancer.

Lakehead University and the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute are intent on putting the city on the map as a medical industry leader in diagnostic imaging.

After the earlier launch of XLV Diagnostics, the research institute has spun out a second company, Radialis, built around a cornerstone high-resolution positron emission (PEM) mammography technology.

PEM is an early detection device that addresses the shortcomings of the conventional mammography.

It can detect breast cancer at its earliest and most treatable stages, especially with people who are most vulnerable to the disease.

Alla Reznik, the chief scientific officer at Radialis and a Canada research chair, explained that general purpose CT machines scan the whole body. The PEM device is a smaller organ-specific device for breast screening only.

Regardless of the breast structure and density, Reznik insists, this device will find cancer.

"X-ray mammography is needed for 50 per cent of the population for whom it works. For the other 50 per cent, we need an alternative. We need molecular breast imaging. In this class of devices, this will be absolutely the best machine."

The people they especially want to reach with this device are those at higher risk for breast cancer, especially older women with more fatty tissue, and those with a family history of breast cancer.

The PEM device will offer more detailed results in detecting aggressive forms of cancer earlier, and save the health-care system money in performing biopsies that might not be necessary.

"A million and a half biopsies in North America would be avoided if better screening procedures would be available," said Reznik.

The technology comes with two low-dose nuclear medicine detectors, which Reznik swears are "absolutely the world's best," and were developed by a consortium of partners in Thunder Bay.

The patent-pending detector blocks are placed on both sides of an immobilized and slightly compressed breast.

In their lab testing, they've detected of cancerous tumours as small as one millimetre, and that's without using the latest software to provide a more sharper image.

Pending Health Canada and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, upcoming clinical trials at Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital and Thunder Bay later this...