DIONISOS · DIfferential Operator for Non-ionizing Imaging of breast tumors with Speed-Of-Sound

Breast cancer remains the most common cancer and leading cause of cancer-related death in women in the EU. Although mammography is the gold standard for screening, it suffers from key limitations: it is ionizing, painful, and shows reduced sensitivity for dense breasts—a group already at higher risk. As a result, there is a critical need for a non-invasive, non-ionizing, and more effective imaging method to improve screening coverage and diagnostic accuracy.Ultrasound is a promising alternative: real-time, portable, and non-ionizing. However, conventional ultrasound remains limited due to its low specificity and high user dependency. Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) has emerged as a potential solution by extracting physical tissue parameters like elasticity, attenuation, or speed-of-sound (SoS), yet current techniques lack resolution and robustness for clinical use in breast imaging.The DIONISOS project proposes to address this gap by exploiting Ultrasound Matrix Imaging (UMI)—a novel framework developed in the ERC Consolidator project REMINISCENCE. UMI first consists in recording the reflection matrix of the medium. It then leverages wave physics and computational optimization to generate high-resolution, quantitative maps of SoS, attenuation, and fiber structure. These biomarkers provide crucial diagnostic information: SoS correlates with tissue density and malignancy, while attenuation and fiber mapping enhance the ability to discriminate between benign and malignant lesions.Preliminary in vitro and in vivo results demonstrate UMI’s unprecedented resolution and contrast compared to current methods. DIONISOS aims to a clinical validation of this approach as a non-invasive, quantitative, and operator-independent breast cancer screening tool using standard ultrasound sequence. If successful, it could replace mammography for many use cases, reduce patient discomfort, and improve early cancer detection—particularly for women with dense breasts.