Amanda Pedersen 1

January 24, 2017

3 Min Read
Could A Software Upgrade Make Mammography Better?

FDA approved a software upgrade for the Aspire Cristalle digital mammography system from Fujifilm Medical Systems that enables U.S. customers to use 3-D mammography.

Amanda Pedersen

U.S. radiologists using Fujifilm's Aspire Cristalle system can now offer 3-D mammograms

FDA approval of a mammography software upgrade will allow Fujifilm Medical Systems' U.S. radiology customers to produce 3-D digital images of a patient's breast. The advancement is particularly meaningful for women with dense breast tissue who face a higher than average cancer risk and are more difficult to screen using conventional 2-D mammography.

The digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) software upgrade, approved for the company's Aspire Cristalle system, brings users up to par with mammography providers in Europe, Asia, and Latin America who have had access to the DBT technology for nearly four years.

Rob Fabrizio, the company's director of strategic marketing for digital radiography and women's health, said U.S. providers have "long been waiting for" this upgrade.

With the DBT software, the system's x-ray tube moves through an arc around the breast, acquiring a series of low-dose image slices at different angles, producing a 3-D view so the radiologist can see through tissue less obstructed. The acquired images are reconstructed into a series of high-resolution 1 mm. slices displayed individually or dynamically in a cine mode, the company said, making it easier to identify lesions that could be difficult to see in traditional 2-D mammography images due to overlapping breast structures.

Some U.S. radiologists already offer 3-D mammograms available on other systems, but the technology is not yet considered the standard of care. A conventional mammogram creates a 2-D image from two x-ray images of each breast.

Compared to using full field digital mammography (FFDM) alone, the DBT software is designed to produce more accurate results and also cut back on the number of women called back for repeat imaging due to false positive results.

Outside the United States, Fujifilm's DBT software is known as Amulet Innovality and has been available since May 2013.

According to the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, a collaborative network of seven mammography registries, U.S. radiologists are adopting 3-D mammography faster throughout than they adopted digital mammography. About half of the facilities in the consortium now offer 3-D mammograms. The technology received a strong evidence boost early last year from a study that found the benefits of 3-D mammograms lasts over time. That study, which looked at three consecutive years of data from 44,468 mammograms of 23,958 women, was published Feb. 18, 2016 by JAMA Oncology.

Emily Conant, chief of breast imaging at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and senior author of the study, said the findings reaffirm the value of 3-D mammography.

The results also represented an important step toward informing policies to allow all women the option of 3-D mammography for breast cancer screening, said Conant, who also is a member of the Breastcancer.org professional advisory board.

Amanda Pedersen is Qmed's news editor. Reach her at [email protected]

[Image credit: Fujifilm Medical Systems USA Inc.]

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