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They are difficult to read because the mammogram X-ray reduces a three-dimensional structure -- the breast -- to two dimensions.
WHITE ON WHITE
"You have the white thing -- the tumor -- superimposed on this other white stuff -- that's the healthy tissue," O'Connell said.
Women with "dense" breasts were always difficult to image, she said. A mammogram that does not show a tumor does not mean a woman with dense breasts is cancer-free. "All it means is that we can't see anything. It doesn't mean there is nothing there."
And mammograms can often show only part of a tumor -- what looks like a speck on a mammogram is often at the core of a much larger tumor.
O'Connell believes the Cone Beam system will be popular if it is ever approved. It would be far more comfortable than getting a mammogram.
"You lie there. You hold still. It takes 10 seconds," said O'Connell, who was subject number 3 in the trial.
"You are lying on the table with the breast dependent," she said -- the breast is allowed to hang through a hole in the table. The scanner takes 300 shots from every angle.
"The computer does its magic and reconstructs what looks like a breast," O'Connell said. Continued...
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