Jan
26
Pain Free Mammogram Technology Waiting FDA Approval
January 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
When approved, this heretofore oxymoron is biting the dust at last, and good riddance. Called digital tomosynthesis, a new pain-free breast imaging technology in development that uses less compression than traditional mammograms should cause less of the ritual discomfort and indignity in screening for breast cancer. There’s positive news on other fronts as well. Tomosynthesis also should make cancers easier to find in dense breast tissue, appearing as irregular white areas. And because it can take at least 11 different angles of the breast using an X-ray tube that moves in an arc around the breast to capture several images, the clear, focused digital images it sends to a computer should be able to pinpoint cancer as small as two millimeters.
With conventional mammography, the breast is pulled away from the body, compressed, and held between two glass plates to ensure that the whole breast is viewed. Two X-rays of each breast are taken from different angles, top to bottom and side to side. Mammography is a good imaging technique, but it has some limitations, including overlapping of the breast tissue, which can hide a cancer, and only provides a limited number of views.
On the other hand, another new method of screening based on ultrasound technology is being tested that’s not only pain free but actually ‘comforting’! Called computed ultrasound risk evaluation device, or CURE, it involves suspending breasts in water, feeling like a ‘warm sauna’. At this point it can only detect cancers above 5 centimeters.
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