ACR meeting to highlight digital mammography

With Food and Drug Administration approval for a full-field digital mammography system finally arriving this year, the new imaging technique will be a hot topic at the American College of Radiology’s 29th conference on breast cancer in San Francisco.

The meeting will be held April 8 through 11 at the San Francisco Hilton.

In addition to digital mammography, panels at the convention will cover malpractice, breast cancer diagnosis, breast pathology, and management dilemmas.

The FDA gave premarket approval for GE Medical Systems’ full-field digital mammography unit, the Senographe 2000D, in February. GE will display the system at the conference’s exhibit hall, said Amy Hobert, GE’s mammography marketing manager.

“We won’t be doing a lecture (using the system) but we will have a hands-on demonstration, and we’ll have written information about the machine,” Hobert said.

GE has sold 15 Senographe 2000Ds in the U.S. and 25 in Europe, according to Hobert.

GE has FDA approval to market the $500,000 unit for hard-copy use only. This means system users will be limited initially to reading digitally processed hard copies. Marketing the unit as a hard-copy device will give clinicians time to become familiar with the new technology before it’s marketed in soft-copy, said Charlie Young, GE spokesperson (SCAN 2/16/00).