Experimental X-ray Spots Hard-to-Find Breast Cancer

Mammograms of the future may detect small and elusive breast cancers that sometimes go unnoticed by today’s technology--if scientists can perfect a new X-ray imaging method being developed.

The new mammography technique--diffraction-enhanced imaging, or DEI--uses ultrabrilliant X-rays and provides a dramatic contrast between normal tissues and tumors.

Conventional mammograms show differences in tissue densities and composition as contrasting areas, which allows doctors to identify tumors. Sometimes, though, the difference between healthy and cancerous tissue is murky. But DEI tests showed up to 25 times better contrast than the conventional X-ray method.

However, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York caution that they are still about 10 years away from actually using it in mammograms. The DEI method is still in the experimental stage and the development of mammography machines to incorporate it is far off.

The DEI could also be used to detect problems in other tissues and organs such as kidneys.

“The motivation for doing this is the fact that about 10% of tumors are missed in a mammogram,” said William Thomlinson, a physicist at the Brookhaven lab.