A new trial may be the answer for finding breast cancer in women who don't have symptoms.
The trial will test two types of imaging tools—2-D and 3-D mammography.
2-D mammography takes pictures from two sides of the breast to create a flat image. 3-D mammography takes images from different angles around the breast and builds it into 3-D-like image.
The study is now open for enrollment. It's led by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Participants will provide critical information that will help researchers learn how to best scan patients for breast cancer.
Researchers are looking for healthy women ages 45 to 74 who are already planning to get routine mammograms.
Participants will help researchers learn how to best scan patients for breast cancer. It will also help women make more informed decisions about the screening tests in the future.
"Nearly 50 million screening mammograms occur each year in the U.S., yet it has been decades since a large-scale randomized trial of mammography has been done," said Worta McCaskill-Stevens, M.D.
Dr. McCaskill-Stevens is the director of NCI's Community Oncology Research Program, which supports the trial.
"The evolution of mammography technology provides us with an opportunity to fill in the gaps in our knowledge about two available breast cancer screening tests," she added.
