Successful treatment and survival rates for breast cancer patients are dramatically affected by early detection of breast cancers. While digital or 2D mammography is still a great tool in the fight against breast cancer, it is only a 2-dimensional picture of the breast. The Genius™ 3D Mammography™ exam allows doctors to examine your breast tissue layer by layer. So, instead of viewing all of the complexities of your breast tissue in a flat image, as with conventional 2D mammography, fine details are more visible and no longer hidden by the tissue above or below.

Reasons to get screened
Breast cancer key facts

Very low X-ray energy is used during the screening examination so your radiation exposure is below the FDA guidelines. The Genius™ 3D Mammography™ exam reduces callbacks by up to 40% compared to 2D alone. In addition, only the Genius 3D Mammography™ exam is proven to find 20-65% more invasive breast cancers compared to 2D alone, an average increase of 41%. The Genius exam is also the only mammogram FDA approved as superior for women with dense breasts. It is truly a better mammogram for all women.

The Genius exam may also be used during a diagnostic mammogram if you happen to be called back for this type of exam.

  • What to expect during your exam

    A Genius 3D Mammography™ exam is very similar to a traditional mammogram. Just as with a digital mammogram, the technologist will position you, compress your breast under a paddle and take images from different angles. A Genius exam may be used as a screening tool in conjunction with a traditional digital mammogram or may be used by itself for a diagnostic mammogram.

    During the Genius part of the exam, the X-ray arm sweeps in a slight arc over the breast, taking multiple breast images in just seconds. Your doctor is then able to view your breast tissue in one millimeter layers. Instead of viewing all the complexities of your breast tissue in one at image, the doctor can examine the tissue one page or “slice” at a time.

    There is no additional compression required with Genius exam, and it only takes a few seconds longer for each view. The technologist will view the images at a computer workstation to ensure adequate images have been captured for review by a radiologist, who studies them and reports results to either your physician or directly to you.

  • Who can have a Genius™ 3D Mammography™ exam?

    The Genius exam is more accurate for women of all ages, with both dense and non-dense breasts, and the Genius exam is the only mammogram FDA approved as superior for women with dense breasts.

  • What about radiation?

    IGenius exams is comparable to a conventional 2D mammogram when using low dose so ware.

  • How does the Genius™ 3D Mammography™ exam work?

    The Genius exam allows doctors to examine your breast tissue layer by layer. So, instead of viewing all of the complexities of your breast tissue in a flat image, as with conventional 2D mammography, fine details are more visible and no longer hidden by the tissue above or below.

    A good analogy for the Genius exam is like thinking of the pages in a book. If you look down at the cover you cannot see all of the pages—but when you open it up, you can go through the entire book page by page to see everything between the covers.

    The Genius exam consists of a 2D and 3D™ image set, where the 2D image can be either an acquired image or a 2D image generated from the 3D™ image set.

For more information about a 3D mammogram, please call one of our Outpatient Diagnostic Centers.

* Compared to 2D mammography alone.

REFERENCES
1. FDA submissions P080003, P080003/S001, P080003/S004, P080003/S005 2. Results from Friedewald, SM, et al. “Breast cancer screening using tomosynthesis in combination with digital mammography.” JAMA 311.24 (2014): 2499-2507; a multi-site (13), non-randomized, historical control study of 454,000 screening mammograms investigating the initial impact the introduction of the Hologic Selenia® Dimensions ®¬ on screening outcomes. Individual results may vary. The study found an average 41% (95% CI: 20-65%) increase and that 1.2 (95% CI: 0.8-1.6) additional invasive breast cancers per 1000 screening exams were found in women receiving combined 2D FFDM and 3DTM mammograms acquired with the Hologic 3D MammographyTM System versus women receiving 2D FFDM mammograms only. 3. Zuckerman SP, Conant EF, Keller BM, et al. Implementation of Synthesized Two-dimensional Mammography in a Population-based Digital Breast Tomosynthesis Screening Program. Radiology. 2016 Dec;281(3):730-736. 4. Skaane P, Bandos A, Eben EB et al. Two view digital breast tomosynthesis screening with synthetically reconstructed projection images: comparison with digital breast tomosynthesis with full-field digital mammographic images. Radiology. 2014 Jun;271(3):655-63.
5. Bernardi D, Macaskill P, Pellegrini M et al. Breast cancer screening with tomosynthesis (3D mammography) with acquired or synthetic 2D mammography compared with 2D mammography alone (STORM-2): a population-based prospective study. Lancet Oncol. 2016 Aug;17(8):1105-13. 6. McDonald ES, Oustimov A, Weinstein SP et al. Effectiveness of Digital Breast Tomosynthesis Compared With Digital Mammography: Outcomes Analysis From 3 Years of Breast Cancer Screening. JAMA Oncol. 2016 Jun 1;2(6):737-43. 7. Rafferty EA, Durand MA, Conant EF, et al. Breast Cancer Screening Using Tomosynthesis and Digital Mammography in Dense and Nondense Breasts. JAMA 2016 Apr 26;315(16):1784-6. 8. Data on file at Hologic. 9. National cancer Institute:http://www.cancer.gov/types/breast/risk-fact-sheet 10. US breast cancer statistics. Breastcancer.org.http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics. Accessed March 27, 2015. 11. American Cancer Society:http//www.cancer.org/cancer/breastcancer/detailedguide/ breast-cancer-survival-by-stage
The GeniusTM 3D MammographyTM exam (a.k.a. GeniusTM exam) is acquired on the Hologic® 3D MammographyTM system and consists of a 2D and 3DTM image set, where the 2D image can be either an acquired 2D image or a 2D image generated from the 3DTM image set. The GeniusTM exam is only available on the Hologic® 3D MammographyTM system. Please consult your physician for a full list of benefits and risks associated with mammography.