A smart bra, known as the iTBra, is being developed to fight against breast cancer. Connected patches are designed to be worn inside the bra and can detect early signs of cancer at home, without the need for mammograms or ultrasound screenings.
The bra, which is at a prototype stage, uses heat sensors to measure the woman's circadian temperature changes within breast cells and then sends this data to the wearer's smartphone or PC. A breast cancer examination could be completed by wearing the device for 12 hours, while you go about your day, but the range is between two and 24 hours.
The data is then analysed by algorithms and neural networks which identify and categorise abnormal temperature and other cellular patterns.
The company behind the iTBra, Cyrcadia Health, is now trialling the system with the Ohio State University and the Medicine X group at Stanford. This is because this technological method of detecting early signs of breast cancer remains untested and so Cyrcadia Health needs the studies to back up its system.
So far it has already been tested on 500 patients in which it proved to be 87% accurate, slightly higher than mammograms at 83%.
The iTBra was also the subject of a documentary titled Detected which screened at SXSW 2015. We'll keep you up to date if and when the iTBra makes it out of clinical trials and into production.