That research puts to bed the assumption that many overdiagnosis cases are due to cancers disappearing on their own.

"Physicians caring for women need to recognize invasive breast cancer for what it is — lethal," Dr. Debra Monticciolo, chair of the ACR Breast Imaging Commission, told HCB News at the time.



3) Hologic calls foul on Fujifilm tomo option

On the business side of things, we saw two of the leading breast imaging OEMs enter a legal dispute earlier this year.

In early July, Hologic sued Fujifilm Medical Systems for infringing five patents issued to its Selenia Dimensions digital breast tomosynthesis system. The company claims that the digital breast tomosynthesis option for Fujifilm’s ASPIRE Cristalle digital mammography system is in patent violation.

When the DBT option received FDA approval in January 2017, Fujifilm stated that it combines its hexagonal close pattern detector design, advanced image processing and image acquisition workflow. Issues arose when it was on display at the National Consortium of Breast Centers conference in March and the Society of Breast Imaging Symposium in April.

Hologic is asking Fujifilm to put an end to the infringement and pay monetary damages.

4) Automated breast ultrasound doubles cancer detection

Mammography isn’t cutting it when it comes to high breast density, so researchers and system developers are on a quest to find the best supplemental screening tool for this patient population.

NorthShore University Health System in Chicago seems to be onto something. The health system doubled its cancer detection rate by performing 40 automated breast ultrasound exams per day for 15 months.


GE Healthcare’s Invenia ABUS, which was used for the study, is currently the only ABUS system approved for use as screening adjunct to mammography. Over 200 facilities globally have installed the system — more than 120 of which are in the U.S.

Sankar Suryanarayanan, general manager of the ABUS business at GE, explained that a large-scale clinical trial that demonstrates the performance of ABUS on the population is needed for guidelines to change.

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