GE Healthcare, a provider of digital mammography, has introduced new technology, SenoBright Contrast Enhanced Spectral Mammography (CESM), to aid in breast cancer diagnosis. The new technology helps to increase accuracy of assessment, and reduces patient anxiety.
GE Healthcare said that its new CESM technology reduces ambiguity in mammography results, enabling physicians to detect and diagnose cancer with more confidence even in the densest part of the breast tissue more rapidly and accurately.
Working like the multiple-flash, red-eye reduction function in a digital camera, CESM uses X-rays at multiple energies to create two separate exposures. The resulting images specifically illuminate and highlight areas where there is angiogenesis, growth of small blood vessels potentially related to the presence of cancer.
Clarisse Dromain of Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute in France, said: “A CESM exam takes from 5 to 10 minutes. During my investigation of the use of CESM with my own examinations of patients, I have been able to better define the spread of a cancer compared to standard mammography and ultrasound, and follow-up exams with an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) validated exactly the same results.
“Moreover, in the majority of cases the confidence in the diagnosis is high enough that the patient can be told the results that same day.”