Mammography

Many women with early-stage breast cancer undergo successful treatment for the disease. Some women who have been treated, however, may develop recurrent cancers. Imaging surveillance can detect the recurrence in time for treatment.

Women complain that waiting for definitive results after a breast imaging exam is a nerve-racking experience. Staff at one hospital system have identified bottlenecks in the process and have reduced the critical wait time between an abnormal mammogram and a final diagnosis.

Years ago, tomosynthesis was cited as one reason radiology needed digital mammography. A digital detector could be arced around the breast to capture multiple views from different angles, stripping away tissue that obscures cancers. But despite the commercial introduction of digital mammography five years ago, the use of tomosynthesis remains limited to a few isolated medical centers.

Use of digital mammography is routine practice at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, although the breast imaging team, headed by Dr. William Poller, is still smoothing out the kinks.

Mercury Computer Systems has emerged from the shadows of medical imaging with a portfolio of advanced processing products and services. The company, which previously served mostly as a supplier of 2D imaging components to major OEMs, has begun shopping 3D and 4D products around the imaging industry. These products vary from software only to software-hardware combinations and are designed to perform critical functions in diagnostic and interventional products, as well as PACS.

Sectra hopes to strengthen its position in women’s healthcare with the availability of osteoporosis testing as part of its digital MicroDose mammography system.

Cedara is unveiling this week a CAD system designed for ultrasound. The Canadian software developer is exhibiting the new technology at the European Congress of Radiology in Vienna as part of an extensive offering of PACS tools addressing orthopedic planning, digital mammography screening, 3D, multislice CT, and PET/CT. The ECR is the first major exhibit of Cedara’s technologies since the company announced Jan. 18 its planned acquisition by Merge Technologies.

Less than two years after its establishment, Giotto USA is planning the release of a full-field digital mammography (FFDM) system. Company executives are planning strategy around a 2005 launch of the product.

MR mammography benefits from the reputation of its cornerstone modality's ability to detect soft-tissue abnormalities, particularly cancer. And it presents the opportunity for patients to avoid the discomfort of breast compression.

Adding contrast media to high-energy digital mammography studies can generate clearer images of difficult-to-spot breast masses. The use of contrast and digital subtraction algorithms led to results similar in clarity to breast MR in a small investigational study by German researchers.

There’s no doubt that computer-aided detection increases the ability to pick up breast cancers. But questions remain about which users benefit most from CAD, as cancer detection rates vary widely with breast imaging experience.

Plans to digitize radiology departments often exclude mammography. But advances in digital acquisition, viewing, and network technologies may change this, according to a study presented at the 2004 EuroPACS and Management in Radiology conference.

Five years have passed since the first full-field digital mammography unit was released, yet mammographers are only beginning to embrace the electronic capture of images. Still unrealized, but progressing faster than immediately obvious, is contrast media mammography (CMM), the use of contrast agents and FFDM to visualize the bed of blood vessels that typically accompanies the growth of cancer.

Digital mammography has so much to offer that it might, almost, overcome the fact that it has yet to prove clinical superiority over screen-film mammography. Many users have, in fact, already decided that digital is worth its higher cost-about 40% of all mammography systems sold in the first half of 2004 were digital.

Digital mammography integrated with PACS has numerous advantages over screen-film mammography when it comes to image storage, transmission, archiving, and consultation, according to a study conducted at Cottage Health System in Santa Barbara, CA. But those benefits come at a cost in time and productivity.

Critics of population-based mammography screening regularly pick holes in studies claiming to show its value. Now researchers from Denmark have produced a watertight case, showing that mass screening really can cut breast cancer deaths.

Enter Ripley’s Odditorium on the Web, and you are greeted by the man who smokes through his eye, the human plank, Fire Eater, and Rubber Man. These are not the sort of folks most people meet in their daily lives. They establish Ripley’s Believe It Or Not as the world’s authority on unbelievable, odd, weird, and unusual things.

Digital mammography integrated with PACS has numerous advantages over screen-film mammography when it comes to image storage, transmission, archiving, and consultation, according to a study conducted at Cottage Health System in Santa Barbara, CA. But those benefits come at a cost in time and productivity.

About 90 digital mammography systems were shipped to U.S. customers in the first half of 2004, compared with 130 film-based units, according to industry executive estimates. Full-field digital mammography systems thus accounted for almost 40% of the units delivered in the first half of last year. The percentage of revenue tips the scales in FFDM's favor, as each digital system sells for more than a half-million dollars, about six times more than the cost of a film system.

Digital mammography has so much to offer that it might, almost, overcome the fact that it has yet to prove clinical superiority over screen-film mammography. Many users have, in fact, already decided that digital is worth its higher cost-about 40% of all mammography systems sold in the first half of 2004 were digital.

The industry ended the calendar year with a flurry of FDA clearances, easily topping last year’s total and establishing a new high for the decade.

No other company has done what GE has done: The merger of its medical systems unit with British pharmaceutical giant Amersham combined a multimodality maker of imaging equipment with the manufacturer of contrast media.

Full-field digital mammography (FFDM) captured the lion’s share of attention during the 2004 RSNA meeting. As expected, Siemens Medical Solutions showed its Mammomat Novation as a marketable product, while several other manufacturers reappeared with upgraded products or works-in-progress.

Full-field digital mammography is comparable to screen-film in detecting breast cancer, according to results of a randomized trial in Norway involving nearly 25,000 women.

Hologic, which in recent years has made women’s health its principal focus, is showing its full-field digital breast tomosynthesis system as a work-in-progress for the second consecutive RSNA meeting. Despite growing interest in this technology, the company expects to present it as a work-in-progress again next year.

Siemens’ fortunes in women’s health have taken a turn for the better since the company released its full-field digital mammography (FFDM) system. Only a few months after the FDA approved its Novation FFDM, Siemens executives were animated about the product.

Adding a clinical breast exam to routine mammography screenings can pick up additional cancers, but at a cost. At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, adding CBE to screening helped identify an additional eight cancers at a cost of $106,280 each, said Dr. Kimberly Feigin, a radiologist at the New York medical center.

Preliminary findings from a national trial of ultrasound as a screening tool in patients at high risk for breast cancer shed light on key variables that influence radiologist interpretive performance.