Women's Imaging Center Offers New Marking Procedure, Regarding Women, Fall 2005

Women's Imaging Center Offers New Marking Procedure

The Women’s Imaging Center at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital can now mark for biopsy breast masses discovered on MRI, thanks to new technology unavailable at most breast imaging centers.

The Imaging Center's marking system takes about an hour and requires an intravenous injection of contrast dye. The patient is scanned by MRI and the dye shows the area of concern. A radiologist then inserts a needle with a titanium marker directly into the area. Another mammogram is taken to document the marker's location. The patient can later receive a mammographyguided wire localization to have the area removed and biopsied.

Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, has become more commonly used to image patients at risk for breast cancer, but only a few centers can mark the areas to be biopsied that are discovered by MRI.

In addition to breast MRI procedures and digital mammography, the Women’s Imaging Center also performs the following services:

Bone density scans
Breast and pelvic ultrasounds
Stereotactic breast biopsies
Ultrasound guided breast biopsies
Aspirations

Click here for more information about the Women's Imaging Center, or contact Margie McDonald, RN, Breast Program Coordinator of the Women's Imaging Center, at (732) 235-6636.

The editorial content for this article was taken from the print version of Regarding Women. Click here to sign up for future editions of Regarding Women.

return to top of page