Screening mammography for breast cancer detection has been criticized for its high false positive rate. Recent advances in tomosynthesis provide 3-D breast images that bring another dimension to mammograms but with the drawback of additional radiation.
This blog comments on a recently published limited clinical study that shows a significant reduction in false positive rates using tomosynthesis-based 3-D mammograms. Besides the issue of whether the improvement in false positives is scalable, the concern over higher radiation exposure still remains. Perhaps a carefully designed clinical study on when tomosynthesis imaging of the breast should be done could be helpful in answering these questions, after additional expanded studies.
Read the full blog article here.