A new two-pronged approach for early breast cancer detection diagnosed malignant and benign tumors in 170 patients. During the clinical study, the system achieved a specificity of 75%. Comparatively, clinical ultrasonography performed on the same patient cohort had a specificity of only 22.5%. The new approach took only 12 seconds, significantly reducing the amount of time required for ultrasonography. Catching breast cancer early leads to better patient outcomes, but existing non-invasive diagnostic techniques have room for improvement. Ultrasonography, for example, cannot account for blood vasculature, which typically holds signatures of early-stage cancer, such as signs of hypoxia. Incorporating photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) can address this shortcoming, because the technology uses optical illumination and acoustics to reveal blood vessel characteristics. Now, Keer Huang and colleagues present a bimodal PACT-ultrasonic computed tomography system that characterizes the human breast’s blood flow and anatomy super quickly. The high-speed imaging visualizes small blood vessel structures up to 5 centimeters beneath the skin’s surface. In a clinical study, the approach achieved 75% diagnostic specificity – identifying tumors as benign or malignant – when used on 170 patients with 186 breast tumors. “There is currently no reliable noninvasive imaging modality widely accepted in clinical practice for closely monitoring breast cancer response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy,” Huang et al. write. “[This system] holds the potential to meet this critical need.”