Women’s imaging encompasses many radiology procedures related to women and the diseases that are most prevalent to women such as breast cancer or gynecological issues. Mammogram, breast ultrasound, breast MRI and breast biopsy are the most commonly used procedures.
The photoacoustic CT, or PACT, imaging technique is said to perform comparably to mammography for cancer detection, but without the discomfort of standard mammograms.
The agent “exhibits powerful tumor delineation” in challenging cases of determining cancer subtypes, and could potentially lead to more personalized, effective treatment strategies.
New research adds to the “strong evidence” supporting screening guidelines and highlights the importance of women adhering to clinical recommendations.
A nonprofit healthcare-certification organization is challenging every user of medical ultrasound in the world to become proficient and certified in the modality by 2030.
There are many known disparities in breast imaging that have been found in previous studies, but insight into diagnostic mammography processes is still lacking.
COVID-19 set back screening mammography further than any other category of breast care, dropping schedule adherence during infection peaks to 36% of pre-pandemic rates.
In addition to CE-MRI's increased sensitivity for identifying breast cancers, the researchers also found the modality had superior negative likelihood ratios with higher pre-test probabilities for safely ruling out malignancy.
Researchers have combined three emerging technologies to detect and classify breast cancers found in follow-up imaging of women whose recent screening mammography was deemed normal.
"The present study validated the feasibility of using MRI-based radiomics to identify a disease prone to missed diagnosis and misdiagnosis," experts involved in the study said.