BACKGROUND: According to the American Cancer Society, each year nearly 180,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and more than 40,000 women will die from the disease. The odds that a woman will develop breast cancer in her lifetime are about one in eight. The odds that she will die from breast cancer are about one in 33.

Mammograms are X-rays of the breast to find cancer. They're used with the hopes to detect breast cancer early enough so that it can be treated and cured. The FDA recommends all women over age 40 years old get mammograms. If breast cancer is suspected, the American Cancer Society lists various imaging tests that may be done including breast ultrasound, a ductogram and breast MRI. To confirm what the images show is really cancer, doctors will then do a biopsy. A biopsy is the only way to know for sure whether a suspicious lump or image is cancerous.

Breast images from mammograms may be very clear for some women, but doctors say mammograms can be hard to read in many women, in part because so many women have dense breast tissue. Avice O'Connell, M.D., from the University of Rochester in New York, says, "If a cancer is a snowman, and the breast tissue is so dense that it looks like a snowstorm, it is impossible to see the snowman. There is nothing to see, but it does not mean that there is nothing there." Dr. O'Connell estimates about 50 percent of the women in her practice have dense breasts.

NEW BREAST SCANNER: An innovative way to scan breasts is giving a clearer image of breast tissue. The Cone Beam Breast Computed Tomography (CBBCT) scanner, which was developed by Ruola Ning, Ph.D., from the University of Rochester, takes a 360-degree view of the breast. It's all done without having to compress sensitive tissue. Women lay face down on a table and place their breast in a funnel-like opening. The CBBCT takes 300 images as it circles the breast for about 10 seconds. The radiation dose that's emitted to get the images is similar to mammography.

The 3-D images produced by the CBBCT can distinguish benign, harmless lesions and calcifications from cancers that may be so small, they'd be nearly undetectable on a traditional mammogram. At the 2006 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, researchers reported that the CBBCT could capture images equal to or better than mammography. Dr. O'Connell says a major plus is that the breast is imaged in its natural shape. She says, "If there is a way you can image the breast in its natural form -- three-dimensional with nothing compressed and nothing overlapped -- you would have a better chance, I think, of picking up a small cancer." She continues, "All mammographers are frustrated by the fact that there are certain breasts and people that we cannot be sure that their mammogram is truly negative. It is very exciting to us as radiologists to think that this might down the road help us to find those small early cancers."

The CBBCT scanner is still under study at the University of Rochester as well as the University of California, Davis.