W
hen she got the call from her doctor’s office in April 2010, Jeanne Parker wasn’t worried. She’d just received a letter saying everything looked fine on her annual mammogram. And while she’d agreed at the time to participate in a trial of new mammography technology, something called breast tomosynthesis that produces 3-D images, the procedure hadn’t felt any different.
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The results, however, were. Tomosynthesis revealed that Parker, who was 52 years old, had breast cancer. At first, Parker assumed it was a mistake. But when she returned for the ultrasound and biopsy, the nurses gave it away. “The nurses were like, ‘You’re doing great!’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s there. They’re always nice, but they’re being extra nice,’” Parker laughs.
Small, but deadly
That Parker can find some humor in her diagnosis is due to the fact that it was caught unusually early. The two tumors—a 3-millimeter lesion in one breast and an 8-millimeter lesion in the other—were so small, they could not be felt during a self-examination or seen on a traditional 2-D digital mammogram. Yet they were serious. One tested positive for the HER2 marker, indicating it was an aggressive cancer.
Early detection is just one of many reasons why tomosynthesis is poised to revolutionize mammograms, says Dr. Stephen L. Rose. “Anything less than 10 millimeters is tiny,” he explains. And yet finding tumors before they hit double digits is essential for happy endings. “As long as we find these lesions [when they’re] less than 10 millimeters,” Rose says, “[a patient’s] prognosis is very close to that of the general population, even if it’s a high-grade tumor.” Digital mammograms likely wouldn’t have revealed Parker’s cancer for another three or four years when it may well have been too late.
At the forefront
As the president of Houston Breast Imaging and the medical director of TOPS Comprehensive Breast Center, Rose has been a leader in this area of radiology for more than a decade. Not only did he helm the tomosynthesis trials in Houston