The Department of Defense (DOD) Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program recently published a report on the current landscape of breast cancer, identifying some concerning trends.
Breast Cancer Today
Breast cancer is now the most diagnosed cancer in women. In the US, the lifetime risk of a woman developing breast cancer has risen from about 1 in 11 in 1975 to 1 in 8 today. The incidence of breast cancer is now growing about 1% per year overall, with steeper increases for Hispanic and Asian American/Pacific Islander women who are hormone receptor positive (HR+). Women who are active-duty service members also have a significantly higher risk of getting breast cancer compared to the general population.
Screening Young Women
The incidence rate of invasive breast cancers in adolescent and young adult females (age 15-39 years) is still low (22.8 per 100,000), but the rate is increasing by about 1% annually. This is complicated by most young women having dense breasts, which makes it more challenging to accurately detect cancers with screening mammography.
In addition, the ionizing radiation exposure from annual screening 2D X-ray digital mammograms (XRM), 3D digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT), or breast CT scans slightly increases the cumulative lifetime risk of cancer — raising concerns for how best to screen young women.
The current landscape of breast cancer screening has also led to the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of slow-growing ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) cancers, which may not impact a patient’s lifespan. This overdiagnosis leads to increased anxiety, toxicity, treatment costs, and use of medical resources. The DOD report concludes that novel approaches — capable of distinguishing indolent from progressing disease — are needed to improve breast cancer screening to reduce overdiagnosis and overtreatment.
QTI’s Breast Acoustic CT™ platform can help overcome these challenges and concerning health trends facing American women.
QTI’s Enhanced Clinical Capabilities and Value
- High-quality and high-resolution native 3D Imaging
- Quantifiable images enable accurate analysis, comparison and trending
- Image quality is consistent and reproducible regardless of operator, breast size, or breast tissue type
- Detection of 50–100-micron clinical features, including microcalcifications
- Functional imaging capability determines tissue type from the speed of sound measurements
- Assessment of tissue doubling time is similar to MRI and CT
- Highly accurate measurements are not scanner operator dependent
