Advances in Breast Cancer Imaging

Dear Colleagues,

According to the World Health Organization, in 2020, there were over 2 million women newly diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide, and almost 8 million women alive who were diagnosed in the previous 5 years. Breast cancer is not only the most prevalent cancer of all, but it is also the one with the highest societal and economic burden, as accounted for in lost disability-adjusted life years.

Despite all screening programs and technological advances, still over half a million women died worldwide in 2020 from breast cancer. These numbers alone hide a disparate reality between high-, middle- and low-income countries, as the 5-year survival rate after diagnosis in the former is over 90% down to 66% in India and 40% in South Africa, for instance. This means that the successful diagnostic and treatment approaches used in high-income countries should be applied elsewhere. Some of the main barriers to such applications are the limited resources and human expertise in middle- and low-income countries.

We believe that recent technological advances, such as artificial intelligence, can become game changers in this context, providing optimized accessible solutions, upscaling existing medical devices, and empowering healthcare professionals. Therefore, this Special Issue on “Advances in Breast Cancer Imaging” will focus on original research papers and comprehensive reviews, dealing with the specific needs and cutting-edge imaging solutions for breast cancer screening, diagnosis, and therapeutic intervention in middle- and low-income countries, or other work that can be adapted to inspire the development of solutions for this context.

Topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Risk assessment, screening, and diagnosis;
• Treatment planning and prognosis;
• Breast density classification;
• Optimized visualization methods;
• Image interpretation;
• Dose assessment;
• Image-guided assessment, biopsy, and intervention;
• User training;
• Artificial intelligence;
• Virtual and augmented reality;
• Digital health;
• Economics and social impact.

Dr. Ana Isabel Rodrigues Gouveia
Dr. Hugo Alexandre Ferreira
Dr. Nuno Matela
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Bioengineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• breast imaging
• diagnosis
• mammography
• ultrasound
• magnetic resonance imaging
• positron emission tomography
• positron emission mammography
• microwave imaging
• image-guided intervention
• artificial intelligence
• virtual reality
• augmented reality
• digital health