Woman's Doctor: 3-D tech helping doctors find cancer sooner
Breast cancer diagnoses are being made more precise with the use of 3-D technology that's allowing doctors to find certain cancers earlier, which is key to treatment.
Ashley Pelekakis is 33, which is young for a mammogram, but she knew early on that she was at high risk for breast cancer.
"My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 46. She is actually now a three-time survivor," Pelekakis said.
A champion for her mom, it was a troublesome self-breast exam that led Pelekakis to Mercy Medical Center, where, since 2013, radiologists like Dr. Jean Warner have been using 3-D mammograms to get the best possible images of the breast.
"We're getting multiple thin-section images of each breast in each projection," Warner said.
Hundreds of images with 3-D technology are allowing doctors to see some cancers that can be hard to find hidden in dense breast tissue.
"The other advantage is that it can help us figure out when something that we noticed on the 2-D image really isn't real. It might be just normal overlapping tissue structures," Warner said. "We are seeing that there are cancers that we see now that we would not have seen without 3-D imaging."
"It puts your mind at ease to know that you're being monitored correctly, and if there is something that might show up, they'll be able to catch it early enough to start the treatment process," Pelekakis said.
Warner said every woman should have a risk assessment before age 30. Average-risk women should begin annual screenings at age 40. At-risk women should get screenings much sooner, including African American women and those with a family history, like Pelekakis, who's a huge advocate for self-exams.
"It's what brought me in here," Pelekakis said.