Jessica Dean's Healthy Living: New Breast Cancer Screening Technology
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Updated: October 31, 2012
Three-dimensional breast imaging can ultimately spare some women from an unnecessary biopsy.
Using this technology it may appear to be a traditional mammography machine, but the images it captures are quite different. They can see everything in 3-d. That's important because some women's breast tissue appears white in 2-d images making it difficult to detect possible tumors which also appear white.
For example, the two images side by side in the 2-d picture, its difficult to see a tumor, but if you look at the same breast using 3-d imaging you can see a distinct mass. The hope is it would allow doctors to catch problems a year or two earlier than they would in a traditional mammogram.
Here's some even better news...The 3-d mammogram is covered by most insurance providers.
