When it comes to cancer, early detection is key, and many doctors say 3D mammograms can catch breast cancer in its earliest stages.
One in eight women will develop breast cancer, and more than 40,000 will die from the disease this year alone. Gynecologist Kinnari Desai says 3D mammograms can lower those numbers.
"3D mammography allows us to screen patients for breast cancer in a more accurate way than 2D mammography,” said Desai.
Rather than taking four compressed pictures, a 3D scan looks at the entire breast, separating tissue and identifying small tumors that would otherwise be missed.
"It's almost like a panoramic view of your entire breast, and then it slices those images in millimeter segments, so it's sort of like flipping through a book, and there were less callbacks. And what callbacks mean is sort of that hey, we think we saw something on the mammogram, but we're not sure, so those false sort of positives is what we call it rates declined, and we're able to detect breast cancers earlier,” said Desai.
The ultimate goal: If cancer is caught before spreading to lymph nodes, the five-year survival rate is almost 100 percent.
"By the time you can palpate a mass in your breast and if it is cancerous it's gonna be pretty advanced, so if we can find these cancers early before we can even feel them, that would be you know pretty good for these patients who get diagnosed with breast cancer,” said Desai.
3D imaging has been shown to be beneficial for detection in women with dense breast tissue.
There has been an ongoing push to make notification of a woman’s breast density a requirement, but in Washington state that is still being debated.
