Focusing light on breast cancer diagnostics

A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), comprising principally of Dr. Ishan Barman, Dr. Narahara Chari Dingari and Dr. Jaqueline Soares, and their clinical collaborators at University Hospitals, Cleveland have developed the Raman scattering-based concomitant diagnosis of breast cancer lesions and related micro-calcifications.

Let’s find out more about this new breast cancer research done by the team at MIT.

Early detection necessary!
According to MIT, one in eight women in the US will suffer from breast cancer in her lifetime and breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women. Worldwide, breast cancer accounts for 22.9 percent of all cancers (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers) in women. In 2008, breast cancer caused 458,503 deaths worldwide (13.7 percent of cancer deaths in women).

Core needle biopsy.

Therefore, technological advancements for its early detection and subsequent treatment can make a significant impact by preventing patient morbidity and mortality and reducing healthcare costs, and are thus of utmost importance to society. Currently, mammography followed by stereotactic breast biopsy serves as the most promising route for screening and early detection of cancer lesions.

Nearly 1.6 million breast biopsies are performed and roughly 250,000 new breast cancers are diagnosed in the US each year. One of the most frequent reasons for breast biopsy is microcalcifications seen on screening mammography, the initial step in early detection of breast cancer. Microcalcifications are micron-scale deposits of calcium minerals in breast tissue that are considered one of the early mammographic signs of breast cancer and are, therefore, a target for stereotactic breast needle biopsy.

However, despite stereotactic guidance, needle biopsy fails to retrieve microcalcifications in one of five breast biopsy patients. In such cases, the resulting breast biopsies are either non-diagnostic or false-negative, thereby, placing the patient at risk and potentially necessitating a repeat biopsy, often as a surgical procedure.

There is an unmet clinical need for a tool to detect microcalcifications in real time and provide feedback to the radiologist during the stereotactic needle biopsy procedure as to whether the microcalcifications seen on mammography will be retrieved or the needle should be re-positioned, without the need to wait for a confirmatory specimen radiograph.

Such a tool could enable more efficient retrieval of microcalcifications, which would, in turn, minimize the number of x-rays and tissue cores required to achieve a diagnostic biopsy, shorten procedure time, reduce patient anxiety, distress and discomfort, prevent complications such as bleeding into the biopsy site seen after multiple biopsy passes and ultimately reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with non-diagnostic and false-negative biopsies and the need for follow up surgical biopsy.

If 200,000 repeat biopsies were avoided, at a cost of $5,000 per biopsy (a conservative estimate and would be much higher for surgical biopsies), a billion dollars per year can be saved by the US healthcare system. The MIT Laser Biomedical Research Center, has recently performed pioneering studies to address this need by proposing, developing and validating Raman and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy as powerful guidance tools, due to their ability to provide exquisite molecular information with minimal perturbation.

Specifics of the technique
Stating the specifics of the technique developed by MIT, the team said that their research focuses on the development of Raman spectroscopy as a clinical tool for the real time diagnosis of breast cancer at the patient bedside. “We report for the first time development of a novel Raman spectroscopy algorithm to simultaneously determine microcalcification status and diagnose the underlying breast lesion, in real time, during stereotactic breast core needle biopsy procedures.”

Microcalcification..

In this study, Raman spectra were obtained ex vivo from fresh stereotactic breast needle biopsies using a compact clinical Raman system, modeled and analyzed using support vector machines to develop a single-step, Raman spectroscopy based diagnostic algorithm to distinguish normal breast tissue, fibrocystic change, fibroadenoma and breast cancer, with and without microcalcifications.

The developed decision algorithm exhibits a positive and negative predictive value of 100 percent and 96 percent, respectively, for the diagnosis of breast cancer with or without microcalcifications in the clinical dataset of nearly 50 patients.

Significantly, the majority of breast cancers diagnosed using this Raman algorithm are ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the most common lesion associated with microcalcifications, which has classically presented considerable diagnostic challenges.

This study demonstrates the potential of Raman spectroscopy to provide real-time feedback to radiologists during stereotactic breast needle biopsy procedures, reducing non-diagnostic and false negative biopsies. Indeed, the proposed approach lends itself to facile assembly of a side-viewing probe that could be inserted into the central channel of the biopsy needle for intermittent acquisition of the spectra, which would, in turn, reveal whether or not the tissue to be biopsied contains the targeted microcalcifications.

Unlock your mobile with SlimPort

Andre Bouwer.

Founded in 2002, Analogix Semiconductor Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, has introduced the SlimPort that turns your mobile phone into a game console. It also turns your phone into a PC. SlimPort also turns your phone into a media library and player.

SlimPort is a simple mobile accessory that unlocks the full power of your phone or tablet. Some examples are the LG optimus G Pro, PadFone Infinity, Google nexus and Arrows Tab, respectively.

Speaking at the 13th Global Electronics Summit at Santa Cruz, USA, Andre Bouwer, VP Marketing, Analogix, said SlimPort also connects to any TV, monitor and projector. It should not be confused with DisplayPort, an open standard and owned by VESA, MyDP is an extension of DisplayPort. SlimPort is a brand of products that provide access to all of your videos, games, and work, wherever you are. It complies with MyDP.

DisplayPort is everywhere. It drives internal and external notebook screens. TVs need notebook connectivity and 4K x 2K, as do phones and tablets. DisplayPort is architected for mobile. It is used in all PCs today. It offers the highest resolutions and battery charging during display. It supports fixed data frequency and spread spectrum, and has passed EMI tests. It reduces the system power consumption as well as noise, strengthening incoming and outgoing RF signal.

SlimPort connects VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. SlimPort performs 1920×1080 at 60Hz, making it ideal for gaming, and 1920×1200 at 60Hz, making it suitable for office. SlimPort charges and preserves the battery. It plays HD audio and video, and you can also plug in USB power to charge your phone.

SlimPort creates value. It is easy to integrate and provides seamless connectivity across the product line. It enables new mobile price points, and allows new bundling opportunities and more data usage. Analogix is not stopping here! It further intends to increase the resolution to 4K, support multi-screen, allow AV+USB data and enterprise security.

Embedded software: Next revolution in EDA

Dr. Wally Rhines.

There is a key lesson that Mentor Graphics made while trying to deliver solutions that were right for software and hardware developers. The lesson was: tailor the software to the discipline! Make it as similar to their environment as possible!!

Delivering his speech at the ongoing 13th Global Electronics Summit in Santa Cruz, USA, Dr. Wally Rhines, chairman and CEO, Mentor Graphics, said that 15 years of acquisitions taught Mentor how to think and behave as an embedded software company.

Open systems requires active engagement in software committees. Each open source project has some form of governance to manage contributions, release plans, etc. There is a community peer selection process for each open source project. About 50 Mentor Embedded Sourcerers are actively involved in the open source and Android communities.

There is a need to take the advantage of knowing both worlds. Mentor’s Sourcery CodeBench is an embedded C/C++ development tool based on open-source standards. Sourcery CodeBench is a complete development environment for embedded C/C++ development on ARM, Coldfire, MIPS, Power, X86, and other architectures. You can install, flash and debug in minutes!

Sourcery CodeBench
Sourcery CodeBench is now the semiconductor industry’s leading embedded toolchain. There is an integrated development environment. It has the GNU compiler (GCC) and optimization tools. It allows debugging and analysis, libraries and QEMU simulator.

There are about ~15,000 downloads per month. There have been ~150,000 downloads and 300 releases per year.

CSSPs — custom to catalog solutions from Quicklogic

Andy Pease.

QuickLogic is a Silicon Valley-based fabless semiconductor company. It is an innovator of CSSPs or customer-specific standard products. It is focused on high-growth mobile markets such as consumer,  enterprise and mobile enterprise.

Speaking at the ongoing 13th Global Electronics Summit in Santa Cruz, USA, Andy Pease president and CEO, QuickLogic, said it does all the drivers that actually need to be inside all the application processors. It is trying to solve the OEM dilemma for mobile market. There are the Android + ARM camp and the Windows + x86 camp, respectively. One way to solve the problem is to do software overlay to Android/Windows.

CSSPs enables the OEM hardware differentiation. It allows fastest time-to-market for custom silicon. It also extends the battery life. The reference designs showcases proven system blocks and capabilities. It is a known good starting point for CSSP development.

The application development dilemma includes optimizing for the specific vertical vs. horizontal markets. When does the integration happen for new standards? Also, how long does a company need to keep mature standards?

QuickLogic has inrtroduced catalog CSSPs. These are ready-to-integrate solutions. They are architectured, developed and verified with application processor vendors.

Platform diversity enables solutions 100 percent programmable for ultimate flexibility. Hybrid programmable/ASIC is provided for common applications requiring some customization. The go-to-market strategy includes complete solutions. It includes software drivers, firmware and application reference codes. It is a collaborative customer model.

A partner challenge could be to re-position its existing AP in new, adjacent markets and applications. QuickLogic’s solution is to provide custom design and software drivers to bridge the AP with camera interface to different types of image capture devices.

Another example is in SD memory. The premier challenge is to adapt the existing baseband processor to emerging market requirements. QuickLogic’s solution is to develop multiple custom designs and software drivers to bridge the baseband with SD memory.

Catalog CSSPs emable the OEM engineers expanded functionality beyond the application processor’s native capability. They expand the served available market of application/embedded processor companies. It scales QuickLogic’s resources across multiple end markets, applications and customers.

Skin inspired electronics for mobile health

Prof. Zhenan Bao

Skin inspired electronics can be used for mobile health such as wireless sensor bands, cell phone and computer at doctor’s office, according to Prof. Zhenan Bao, Stanford University. She was delivering the inaugural lecture on day two of the ongoing 13th Global Electronics Summit in Santa Cruz, USA.

There are organic field-effect transistors (OTFTs). The current flow is moderated by binding of molecules and pressure. E-skin sensor functions have touch (pressure) sensors, chemical sensors and biological sensors. There are other flexible pressure sensors such as conductive rubber, which is thick and has hysteresis. Another type is poly-vinylidene fluoride (PVDF) thin film. Yet another type is the OTFT touch (pressure) sensor.

There is an example of the heart pulse measurement. Another related device is the full pulse wave for medical diagnostics such as blood pressure monitoring, detecting arrhythmia, heart defects and vascular diseases. In terms of temperature sensing, Stanford has developed a flexible body temperature sensor made of plastic.

There is chemical sensing as well. These are very stable and can be put in sea water. There are also electronics to mimic the body, such as the biodegradable OTFT. Another example is the transparent, stretchable pressure sensor. Finally, the other attribute of the human skin is self healing. Stanford University also developed the all-self-healing e-skin.

The e-skin concept ‘Super Skin’ has touch pressure sensors, chemical or biological sensors in air – electronic nose and liquid environments – electronic tongue, flexible strechable materials, biocompatible or biodegradable, self-powered — strechable solar cells and self healing.

Exar serving high-growth areas with innovative value-added solutions

Louis DiNardo.

Exar Corp., established 1971, is headquartered in Fremont, USA, and has design centers in Silicon Valley and Hangzhou, China. Louis DiNardo, president and CEO, Exar, said that the company’s strategic model is to serve high-growth markets with innovative value-added solutions. He was speaking at the ongoing 13th Globalpress Electronics Summit in Santa Cruz, USA.

Exar offers solutions that includes high performance analog-mixed signal as well as data management solutions. Its current market focus is on networking and storage, industrial and embedded systems, and communications infrastructure. It is focusing on power management products, connectivity products and data management solutions.

Power management products include those for analog power management such as switching regulators, switching controllers, linear regulators, supervisory controllers, etc, For programmable power, Exar focuses on multiple output synchronous buck controllers.

Some of the products include POWER, the Exar Programmable PowerSuite 5.0. Recently, Calceda has been powering servers with the PowerXR technology.

For data compression and security, Exar is offering hardware acceleration and software solutions meant for compression and decompression, acceleration, encryption and decryption. There are high growth markets supporting social networking, industrial Internet and financial technology as well.

Exar’s Panther I is a first generation compression/security engine with the PCIe interface. The Panther II is a second generation compression and security engine with PCIe and FPGA interface.

Geo creating better user experience with motion detection algorithm

Brian Gannon

Geo Semiconductor Inc. has been enabling new markets that are changing the world. In automotive, it is into HUDs, Fisheye cameras and digital calibration. In cloud/Skype camera, it is into home monitoring, doorbell cameras, and Skype TV.

According to Brian Gannon, VP Marketing & Business Development, Geo is a four-year old company, built from 20+ years of development  and $300 million+ investment. It has over 50+ customers in production worldwide. All of this IP allows Geo to provide unique, end-to-end solutions to create new markets. He was speaking at the ongoing 13th Global Electronics Summit at Santa Cruz, USA.

Geo has been creating better user experience with motion detection algorithm. Geo’s eWARP processor is a highly efficient hardware block that can be programmed to do any geometric transformation of pixels in real-time.

The eWARP processor is fundamental to camera and projection systems. For the camera, it is correcting distortions, such as wide angle, fisheye, lateral color, etc. It takes care of ePTZ, fisheye, panoramic dewarping and scaling. It is also stitching/blending cameras. Geo provides 3D alignment for stereoscopic cameras as well. Finally, it takes care of the camera optical alignment.

For the projection, the eWARP processor is correcting distortions such as projection optics and keystone correction. It also takes care of ultra short throw, stitching/blending – tiled displays, curved displays and color correction.

Geo provides the only solution that can concatenate multiple transforms. It does multiple independent geometric corrections. An example is enabling real-time ePTZ. There are custom layouts and views, along with real-time HD resolutions up to 60fps. There are up to eight multiple images.

Wide angle lens correction is possible with zero content loss. The heads-up display (HUD) solution corrects for windshield and projector. It simultaneously corrects for any distortion created by the windshield, projector or mirror — instantly and digitally. It removes any alignment parts and electronics in the HUD system. Calibration can be automated to save labor costs.

Geo’s powerful automation software also reduces labor costs and cycle time. For instance, a single eWARP IC can correct, align and dewarp four automotive VGA cameras.

Brocade intros HyperEdge architecture for campus networks

Brocade has announced its HyperEdge architecture, a unified wired and wireless infrastructure, it claims is as dynamic as its users.

Edgar Dias, regional director and country manager, India, said that mobility Is redefining how we access information and connect to each other. By 2020, there are likely to be over 30 billion connected things, with over 200 billion with intermittent connections.

The number of wireless devices connecting to the corporate network has been exploding. It is estimated that by 2016, two-thirds of the mobile workforce will own a smartphone, and 40 percent of the workforce will be mobile.

Healthcare revolutionized by mobility. About 80 percent of remote patient monitoring will be by mobile devices by 2016. Education engages with wireless devices as well, with universities projected to spend more than $837 million on WiFi access points and controllers in 2013. About 22 percent of pupil-facing computers will be tablets by 2015.

The three things required from a campus network solution include reduced complexity, integrated wired and wireless, and investment protection. Mobility changes the game for all organizations and their IT departments. The campus network takes center stage in staying competitive.

Brocade’s HyperEdge architecture.

Brocade’s HyperEdge architecture is agile, as there are collapsed network layers with active links and intelligent wireless AP traffic management for mobile users. It is also automated, simplified with reduced management touch points, and self discovery and configuration of wired and wireless devices. Lower cost of acquisition and operation makes it cost effective.

HyperEdge innovation radically simplifies management, and improves performance. Distributed services such as advanced features and capabilities are propagated across premium and entry level switches. Consolidated management leads to shared switch configuration and network policies, automated management and software updates.

There are active-active links that eliminates STP to improve efficiency and performance. Multichannel trunking is available to scale and interconnect. Distributed AP forwarding leads to intelligent access points route traffic locally to avoid controller bottlenecks. There is the  centralized AP management, where controller based management keeps costs low and coverage levels high. Lastly, there are self-healing access points that automatically adjust to maintain coverage in the event of an access point failure.

Now, I’m on Wikipedia! ;) Thanks everyone!! :)

Today is Holi, the festival of colors. Well, it added some more color to my life as I was told that I have been listed on Wikipedia! You can see it here!

I don’t really know who has added me there, or where they are getting all of their information. All I can humbly say is: thanks a lot, very sincerely, to Wikipedia!

Wikipedia has said I’ve been staying at my Delhi residence since 1984! Well, that’s the year my father, late, Pramode Ranjan Chakraborty, bought this house. Later, in 1986, he, along with my mother, late Mrs Bina Chakraborty, moved to this house.

Why this huge gap in our buying the house and moving in? Well, not many folks know that my parents met with a near fatal accident on Jan. 27, 1986 in the early hours of the day at New Delhi. They were going home by an auto-rickshaw to our home at Greater Kailash-II, New Delhi, when an Ambassador car rammed into their auto-rickshaw full on!

That’s also the day my life changed completely! I was still a student, playing cricket with friends, when my aunt called us from Delhi. We rushed to Delhi, to find our parents badly injured! I personally had to say goodbye to cricket, and turned attention to finding work to somehow run the family! I finally moved to Delhi in Nov. 1987, and that’s where my so-called ‘professional’ life started!

It has been a great ride ever since! All the hard work done seems to have paid off. First, I must mention Gratian Vas, who took me in at Holy Faith International back in 1988. My first brush with electronics was at SBP Consultants & Engineers a year later, followed by Electronics For You. However, it was at DiSyCom magazine, under Arun Bhattacharjee, where I learned the ropes.

Later, I was hired by late Ms Rashmi Bhushan to write for electronic components magazine published by Asian Sources Media. That’s when my life changed significantly! Not only did Asian Sources Media, now, Global Sources, hire me as the full-time telecom editor  and take me to Hong Kong, it gave me first-hand view of China and how it grew in the world of electronics! It has been a fascinating journey ever since!

Thereafter, it was at Reed Elsevier, in Singapore, where I had the late Ian Shelley, Michael Tan, Paul Beh and Swee Heng Tan for company. Everywhere, I learned a lot! That’s what I continue to do even today!

The world can give me as many awards and folks can call me anything, but I shall always remain, yours truly!

Global semicon sales to grow 6.6 percent in 2013: Cowan LRA model

This is a continuation of my coverage of the fortunes of the global semiconductor industry. I would like to acknowledge and thank Mike Cowan, an independent semiconductor analyst and developer of the Cowan LRA model, who has provided me the latest numbers.

According to the WSTS’s Jan 2013 HBR (posted on March 8th, 2013), January 2013’s actual global semiconductor sales came in at $22.824 billion. This actual sales result for January is 2.9 percent higher than January’s sales forecast estimate, namely $22.180 billion.

Source: Cowan LRA model, USA.

Plugging January’s actual sales number into the Cowan LRA forecasting model yields, the following quarterly, half-year, and full year sales and sales growth forecast expectations for 2013 compared to 2012 sales depicted in the table.

It should be highlighted that with last month’s publishing of the final 2012 sales result by the WSTS, the Cowan LRA Model for forecasting global semiconductor sales was updated to incorporate the full complement of 2012′s monthly sales numbers, thereby capturing 29 years of historical, global semiconductor (actual) sales numbers as gathered, tracked and published each month by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) on its website.

As described last month, the necessary mathematical computations required in order to update the complete set of linear regression parameters embedded in the Cowan LRA forecasting model for determining future sales were carried out. The newly derived set of linear regression parameters therefore reflect 29 years (1984 to 2012) of historical global semiconductor sales as the basis for predicting future quarterly and full year sales and sale growth forecast expectations by running the Cowan LRA Model.

Therefore, the table given above summarizes the model’s latest, updated 2013 sales and sales growth expectations reflecting the WSTS’s January 2013′s actual sales as calculated by the model’s newly minted set of linear regression parameters.

Note that the latest Cowan LRA Model’s expected 2013 sales growth of 6.6 percent relative to 2012 final sales ($291.562 billion) is more bullish than the WSTS’s adjusted Autumn 2012 sales growth forecast of 3.9 percent as well as the WSTS’s Autumn 2012′s original forecasted sales growth of 4.5 percent which was released back in November of last year.

In addition to forecasting 2013’s quarterly sales estimates the Cowan LRA Model also provides an forecast expectation for February 2013’s sales, namely $22.436 billion. This sales forecast yields a 3MMA forecast for February of $23.571 billion assuming the no or minimal sales revision is made to January’s actual sales.

Finally, the table provided below details the monthly evolution for 2013’s sales and sales growth forecast predictions as put forth by the Cowan LRA forecasting model dating back to September of last year.

Source: Cowan LRA model, USA.

Note that the most recent 2013 sales growth forecast is up compared to the previous two forecasts of 5.5 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively.

It should be mentioned that the previous 2013’s sales growth forecast for Dec 2012, namely 3.6 percent, was based upon a sales forecast estimate for Jan 2013 versus the latest sales growth forecast estimate of 6.6 percent, which utilizes Jan’s actual sales result just released in the WSTS’s January 2013 HBR, Historical Billings Report.