Painless Mammography to Detect Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a type of cancer in which breast cells grow and divide rapidly and abnormally, form tumors.Some tumors are benign, and some are malignant. The malignant tumor cells invade neighbor tissues. After sometime, the cells of malignant tumor start breaking off and travel to the other part of the body through lymph and blood. This is the beginning of cancer. About seventy-five percent of breast cancer begins in milk duct.

One out of every seven women develops breast cancer in her early age. To date traditional mammogram is only way to detect breast cancer. For most women who undergo mammography is like nightmare as this process involves lot of pain.

It is also difficult for radiologist to interpret accurately from traditional mammogram because 50 percent women have dense tissue and on mammogram, it looks similar to cancer.

Now Radiologists develop a new device called Digital Tomosynthesis, an X-Ray tube that moves in arc around the breast and takes several images of breast in seven seconds from different angles. These images are than send to computer to produce highly focused 3D images through out the breast.

In traditional mammography, the breast is stretched, compressed and then held between two glass plates to make sure that whole breast is viewed. Then two X-Ray images are taken from different angle, one from top to bottom and another one from side to side.

Although it is a good imaging technique but it has certain limitations. It involves lot of pain. Sometime tissues get overlapped and hide the cancer tissue. This technique provides limited number of views.

In contrast to this, Digital Tomosynthesis is painless techniques and provide number of views of different angles of breast.

Digital tomosynthesis technique is currently being reviewed by the FDA and should be commercialized within the year. It can implement easily in any center that provides mammography.