Mammograms are probably the most important tool doctors have to help them diagnose, evaluate, and follow breast cancer. Mammograms don't prevent breast cancer, but they can save lives by finding breast cancer as early as possible so it can be treated. But mammograms aren't perfect. Normal breast tissue can hide a breast cancer, so that it doesn't show up on the mammogram. Mammograms also can be uncomfortable.
Cone Beam Breast Computed Tomography is a new kind of test to screen for breast cancer. Right now, the Cone Beam system is available only for research purposes. It also costs significantly more than a traditional mammogram.
The early results reviewed here are promising. Researchers believe that this new breast imaging technique will make breast cancers easier to see in dense breast tissue, and will make breast screening more comfortable.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Breast cancer screening using a new CT imaging device may be more accurate than is a standard mammogram -- and much less painful, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
The new scan produces three-dimensional pictures, which are better at showing whether a spot on the X-ray is benign or malignant, the researchers at the University of Rochester in New York said.
It can also provide pictures of tissue around the ribs and outer breast toward the armpit, where 50 percent of cancers are found, the researchers told a Radiological Society of North America meeting in Chicago.
The Cone Beam Breast Computed Tomography scanner takes 360-degree views of breast anatomy, with no need to compress the breast between cold glass plates.
"We have one case in which a cancer shows up phenomenally well using this new imaging system, whereas when you look at the same lesion on a mammogram it is hard to detect," said study leader Dr. Avice O'Connell, director of women's imaging at the university's medical center.
O'Connell's team is still doing trials of the system and will not have a full study until 60 women have undergone imaging. But the results so far suggest the CT scan can detect more of a tumor than a mammogram can, O'Connell said. So far, the Cone Beam scanner has detected every tumor seen on a mammogram, she said.
"The mammogram is not 100 percent. It never was," O'Connell said in a telephone interview. "Mammograms in the best hands in the world will miss 15 percent of tumors."
They are difficult to read because the mammogram X-ray reduces a three-dimensional structure -- the breast -- to two dimensions.
WHITE ON WHITE
"You have the white thing -- the tumor -- superimposed on this other white stuff -- that's the healthy tissue," O'Connell said.
Women with "dense" breasts were always difficult to image, she said. A mammogram that does not show a tumor does not mean a woman with dense breasts is cancer-free. "All it means is that we can't see anything. It doesn't mean there is nothing there."
And mammograms can often show only part of a tumor -- what looks like a speck on a mammogram is often the core of a much larger tumor.
O'Connell believes the Cone Beam system will be popular if it is ever approved. It would be far more comfortable than getting a mammogram.
"You lie there. You hold still. It takes 10 seconds," said O'Connell, who was subject number 3 in the trial.
"You are lying on the table with the breast dependent," she said -- the breast is allowed to hang through a hole in the table. The scanner takes 300 shots from every angle.
"The computer does its magic and reconstructs what looks like a breast," O'Connell said.
While CT scans can deliver a hefty dose of radiation, this scanner does not, said O'Connell.
"This gives approximately the same dose as a mammogram," she said.
She believes the first target patients should be women at high risk of breast cancer, who can justify having a pricier screening.
"The insurance is not going to want to pay for a CT," O'Connell said. The average cost of a mammogram is $80, she said -- a CT can cost several hundred.
Breast cancer is the biggest cancer killer of women, after lung cancer, with 1.2 million cases globally -- 270,000 in the United States alone.
It kills 500,000 men and women every year globally -- 40,000 in the United States.
The university has licensed the technology to a Rochester, New York start-up company, Koning Corporation, to make, use and sell Cone Beam scanners.
Breastcancer.org 7 East Lancaster Avenue, 3rd Floor Ardmore, PA 19003
Learn more about our commitment to your privacy
© 2009 Breastcancer.org - All rights reserved.
Breastcancer.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing information and community to those touched by this disease. Learn more about our commitment to providing complete, accurate, and private breast cancer information.
