Better Images. Better Care.
And a Look at the Future of Breast Imaging.

"Most patients are anxious when they come for these exams," says Jim Roberts, clinical operations manager and interim administrative director for the Department of Radiology at Dartmouth, "patients are comforted by the fact that we don't have any film issues, which means we do far fewer repeats with faster results."

"Dartmouth-Hitchcock believes that the future of breast imaging may already be here, with the emergence of digital tomosynthesis technology for screening and diagnostics. "A lot of the problems with mammography stem from tissue overlap," Poplack says, "but if you can unravel the tissue, or eliminate the overlap, then you can avoid recalling a lot of patients who don't really need to be recalled. Tomosynthesis is currently in clinical trails at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and other sites. Our hope is that the clinical studies will prove that breast tomosynthesis reduces the number of false positive screening exams and allow usto detect cancers earlier than with standard mammograms."

"In some instances," Poplack says, "overlying tissue may be obscuring a small cancer. By being able to get a slice-by-slice look at the breast, you may then uncover the cancer that was hidden." He adds, "Tomosynthesis will probably allow us to find more breast cancers earlier."