Doctors in Cache Valley have a new tool to help them detect and diagnose breast cancer earlier in their patients - 3D mammography.
“A mammogram is an x-ray of the breast tissue to look for breast cancer," said Jill Rosier, lead mammography technician at Cache Valley Hospital. "One in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime.”
Rosier says mammograms are a quick and simple way for women to protect themselves from breast cancer.
“They come, they register, they come back to radiology where they just have to remove clothing from the waist up. We generally do four images, two on each breast, and it takes about ten minutes to do the exam.”
The cost is also often low.
“All insurance companies will cover a screening mammogram after the age of forty, but all women can come in for a screening mammogram.”
Cache Valley Hospital recently acquired a new mammography machine that takes 3-dimensional images.
“The x-ray tube ars around. It spreads out the tissue so the radiologist can look at every layer, instead of everything being stack on top of each other.”
Rosier says this new tool will help medical professionals identify and diagnose breast cancer faster than ever before.
“The 3D mammogram, it is finding 41% more invasive breast cancers than 2D mammography alone,” she said. “We also have the ability to do 3D biopsies. We’re super excited about this aspect. We actually use mammogram imaging to target the lesion on the breast. The needle biopsy goes in and take a core sample, and then we can take a little piece of the lesion, send it to pathology, and we can test if that’s cancerous or not.”
