Mammography: X-ray and Breast Tissue Essay

Mammography saves lives, and it 's important to know that women know that they have a certain age to start before it 's too late. Mammography guidelines are the best tool available to screen for breast cancer, and It has helped many women in this world and it has also reduced the breast cancer death rate in the United States by 30 percent. And that all

Currently mammography and ultrasound are basic imaging techniques for detection and localization of breast tumor. Breast Ultrasound is a typically painless medical test that uses reflected sound waves for further evaluation of a breast abnormality or a specific area seen on mammography. Ultrasound can locate and measure abnormalities or changes to determine if a breast lump is solid or filled with fluid. A mammogram is an x-ray of the breast which may find tumors that are too small to feel. Women aged 40 to 74 years should have annual screening mammograms to lower chance of dying from breast cancer(2,15).Mammograms are less likely to find breast tumors in women younger than 50 years. This may

1895 – X-rays were discovered accidentally by physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen. Rontgen was working on a experiment and testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass. He noticed that a nearby tube emitted fluorescent glow of crystals. The air in the tube was released, high voltage applied, the same tube emitted a fluorescent glow. When Rontgen covered the tube in a heavy black paper, a green light could be seen. He concluded that a new light ray was being broadcast. Rontgen discovered that the light was very powerful and the same ray could pass through human tissue, but not through bones and metal objects. Medical applications were soon to follow. ("History of radiography," )

X-rays have numerous different effects on the tissues of the body, depending on the time of exposure and energy of the X-ray photons. Best contrast between different tissues is when the photon energy is about 30 keV, for diagnostic purposes. Resulting in the photoelectric effect dominating at this energy. The tissues absorb X-rays and electrons are released. The X-ray absorption depends on the number of protons in the nuclei of the atoms encountered. A high number will attenuate the beam, producing a strong x-ray shadow, enabling for a high quality image of

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women (Macacu, Autier, Boniol & Boyle, 2015). In 2013 in the United State, 40,030 female have lost their life to breast cancer (Bryan, Westmaas, Alcaraz & Jemal, 2014). When women reach the appropriate age for mammogram screening, it should be recommended by their nurse practitioner. Mammogram screening is used to detect early breast cancer and it is the most reliable test that practitioner used to detect breast cancer (Randel, 2016).

Mammography is a series of X-rays that shows images of the soft tissues of the breast. Mammography is a quick, generally painless test that usually takes less than 20 minutes. “The value of mammography is early detection,” states “Harvard Medical School Health Topics A-z.” The also express, “early detection saves lives and, in many cases, also saves the woman’s breast by identifying the cancer at a very early stage when it is most easily treated and is not life threatening.” Some cancers mammography is able to detect are benign, which means, not cancerous, or malignant, cancerous. In 2006 my mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer at the very young age of 34, younger than the suggested age to start

The Author reports that the new recommended age for mammograms, by the United States Preventative Services Task Force, has changed from 50 to 40 to reduce the harm from over screening and overtreatment. It also reports that self-breast examinations are no longer recommended on a regular basis. This recommendation comes from evidence that there are no major benefits of early screenings and that only “one cancer death is prevented for every 1,904 women” screened, age 40 to 49. Conversely, there is evidence that frequent early screenings can lead to overtreatment

Dr. Welch made a lot of sense in his argument against the use of mammography for population screening, however, I can imagine that he is probably getting a lot of heat form proponents for the use of mammography as a main source of breast cancer screenings in women. There is a lot of money involved in the use of mammography today, and those stakeholders aren’t going to be happy if the use of mammography is reduced or halted; after all, it is still an effective tool in early detection of breast cancer.

Cancer is one of the most lethal diseases that greatly contributes to the death toll of millions people around the globe, especially breast cancer. However, as technologies are being modernized, humans took a major step forward in the battle against cancer by inventing mammography. In the past few years, mammograms helped save countless women’s lives, and consequently, it’s currently one of the leading research programs that attracts attention of many scientists.

Mammograms are the use of x-rays to image the breasts, and ultrasound is the use of sound waves to image breast tissue. Although ultrasound has great contrast resolution, it does not compare with mammogram with spatial resolution of abnormalities. Ultrasound can image macro calcifications, which are large calcium deposits. Ultrasound does not image micro calcifications, small calcium deposits, which can be the first sign of breast cancer. There are other abnormalities of the breast, like breast lumps and pain. A mammogram and an ultrasound should detect breast lumps, but if they do not the chances of cancer are reduced significantly. There are still cases where abnormalities

In an article by Tupper and Holm (2015) a review of literature is performed on the pros and cons of mammography screening. Experts disagree on the usefulness of routine screening and some feel that routine mammograms cause more harm due to over diagnosing. It is estimated that 1 in 6 cancers are over diagnosed by mammograms causing undo harm to the patient who is receiving therapy for a tumor that would never probably bother them. Other experts argue that cancer rates are down due to increased screenings. Tupper and Holm (2015) address arguments on both sides of the controversy along with providing information on how to educate patients so that they can make an informed decision on screening and decreasing risk

In the past, we'd often find that a woman had breast cancer when she came in with a lump. Today, the cancers radiologists find on mammography are usually detected early, before they can be felt by the patient, are smaller than cancers felt by patients, and have much lower levels of lymph node

X-rays were discovered by accident in 1895 by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. Roentgen was already an accomplished scientist with forty-eight published papers. He had a reputation among the scientific community as a dedicated scientist with precise experimental methods. Roentgen had been conducting experiments at the University of Wurzburg on the effect of cathode-rays on the luminescence of certain chemicals. Roentgen had placed a cathode-ray tube, which is a partially evacuated glass tube with metal electrodes at each end, in a black cardboard box in his darkened laboratory. He sent electricity through the cathodre-ray tube and noticed something strange his laboratory. He saw a flash of light

The disadvantage of compression in mammography is that it can cause some discomfort for the client. GE has addressed this by designing the compression paddles with a rounded bucky shape to increase comfort (GE Healthcare 2016). The compression plates of the GE Essential are motorised, but can also be operated manually (GE Healthcare 2016). They have an automatic stop when compression reaches 200 Newtons (Hogg, Kelly and Mercer 2015, 128). The benefits of compression in mammography include: Better spatial resolution as magnification and focal spot blurring is reduced, reduced motion blur, less scattered radiation due to the shorter beam path length, improved image uniformity and less exposure time due to the smaller anatomy (Hogg, Kelly and Mercer 2015, 128). These benefits maximise clinical utilisation by decreasing patient radiation dose and making the pathology easier to detect. Radiation dose is reduced as the reduced beam path length allows lower energy x-rays to be utilised. This means that there is greater subject contrast and pathology buried in glandular tissues can be better visualized, particularly for malignant tissues (Hogg, Kelly and Mercer 2015, 128). Compression is important for efficient image acquisition and the GE Essential features an ergonomic design to allow for

The X-Ray was invented in 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. It all started with a vacuum tube called a Crookes tube, with this Roentgen noticed that by pressing a button that activated an electric current through it a shadow was projected onto a screen that showed the photograph of his wife’s hand with a ring