Dr. Paula Martinez Miravete, of Area de Patología de Mama, Diagnóstico Médico, and colleagues included 5,718 combination studies (2D digital mammography plus tomosynthesis) that had been performed between December 2010 and December 2011. Of these, Miravete's group classified 5,603 cases into the American College of Radiology's (ACR) BI-RADS categories for breast parenchymal density of 2, 3, and 4.
Conventional digital mammography found 133 breast tumors. Tomosynthesis found 47 additional cancers that mammography missed; nine of these were BI-RADS density category 2, 20 were category 3, and 18 were category 4.
DBT improved the detection rate, and because there were no significant differences among the three ACR BI-RADS density patterns, it can be useful not only in more dense categories, but also in category 2 -- i.e., minimal density tissue, Miravete's group concluded.
