An invention which could help with the early detection of breast cancer has won a design award.

It is hoped the new technology by a woman from Bromley will encourage more of us to regularly check our breasts, looking for signs of the disease.

Debra Babalola helped come up with the idea for Dotplot, an at-home breast health monitoring tool that offers guided self-checks on a monthly basis and encourages women to stick to a regular breast self-check routine.

Designed to facilitate the early detection of breast cancer, the technology uses sound waves to monitor breast tissue and details are saved in an app to be compared each month.

Users will then be alerted of any significant changes and urged to see a GP.

The inspiration behind the device came when Shefali Bohra, co-founder of Dotplot, discovered an unusual knot in one of her breasts after a gym workout.

She approached a medical expert for a clinical breast exam who assured her that it was just the result of her workout and, fortunately, the knot resolved itself.

Using this event as a starting point, and astonished by the lack of at-home solutions for the early detection of breast cancer, Shefali and Debra set their ambitions to build a product to address this need.

The invention won at the 2022 James Dyson award, which celebrates and gives the next generation of design engineers the opportunity to make a name for themselves.

Data from Cancer Research UK and charity CoppaFeel! shows 11,500 women die of breast cancer every year in the UK, but many women are failing to perform their monthly checks, with 64% of women aged 18-35 admitting they don’t conduct self-examinations on a regular basis.

Debra hopes Dotplot can help women avoid any scares in the future, and lower the worrying statistics as a result.

She said: "We're really hoping that Dotplot is something women will be able to use to just highlight any changes they need to be aware of within their breast tissue, and to just drive down the numbers of breast cancer cases that are caught at late stages.

"When it's caught in time, the treatability is much greater, and the probability of survival is much greater as well. We just want women to be able to know that catching it in time is best, and just making sure that we're increasing people's chances of survival as much as possible."