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For people at high risk of developing breast cancer, yearly mammograms may not be enough to detect tumors early.

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In a new paper, the team reports that they have improved the resolution of the images produced by their system, making it easier to spot potential tumors, as well as cysts and microcalcifications. The researchers also created a user interface that makes it simple to use the ultrasound probe, even for people with no expertise in ultrasonography.

This system, they believe, could not only enable earlier detection, but also allow for long-term monitoring following breast cancer treatment — either in a doctor’s office or at home.

“At each time interval, the computer interface guides you to position the device in exactly the same location, which is important for the longitudinal monitoring of a given tissue. It’s very intuitive and quite easy to use,” says Canan Dagdeviren, an associate professor of media arts and sciences at MIT and the senior author of the study.

Former MIT postdoc Md Osman Goni Nayeem and MIT graduate students Shrihari Viswanath and Hyeokjun Yoon are the lead authors of the paper, which appears today in Nature Communications .