Matakina International today announced that ProMedica Breast Care on the campus of ProMedica Toledo Hospital became the first in Ohio to offer VolparaDensity™ breast imaging software, designed to help overcome the limitations of mammography to detect cancer in women with dense breasts. Serving Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, the Toledo Hospital Breast Care Center is the region’s premier imaging facility devoted exclusively to patients with breast health concerns and issues and has been named a Breast Imaging Center of Excellence by the American College of Radiology. 

“While Ohio has not yet passed density notification legislation, it was very important for ProMedica Breast Care to stay ahead of the curve and adopt cutting edge technology that enables us to thoroughly and accurately assess breast density, particularly among women for whom mammography alone may not be enough,” said Robin Shermis, MD, MPH, Medical Director, ProMedica Breast Care Center.   

The Enterprise installation of VolparaDensity at ProMedica Breast Care at Toledo Hospital provides the ability to offer objective volumetric breast density values for all 45,000 mammograms performed annually on 11 Hologic Mammography Systems at eight ProMedica facilities.  VolparaDensity, which has been integrated into ProMedica’s PenRad mammography reporting system, can be displayed on digital mammography and PACS workstations, and in addition to Hologic, supports all major commercially available digital mammography systems, including GE, Siemens, Fuji, Philips, IMS Giotto and Medi-Future.

 “We evaluated other commercially available density measurement tools, but we adopted VolparaDensity because it has been proven to provide objective, volumetric measurement that demonstrates to payors that we have a consistent, standardized approach to density assessment and supplemental imaging.  This is also very important to reassure women that they have been thoroughly assessed and vectored to the imaging tool best suited to improve the early detection of cancer, based on their breast density and individual risk factors,” Dr. Shermis added.

Cleared by the FDA, HealthCanada, the TGA and CE-marked, VolparaDensity is in use at sites across the globe helping radiologists assess breast density more objectively and helping them better consider who might benefit from additional screening.  Highly correlated to breast MR assessments, VolparaDensity generates an objective, automatic measurement of volumetric breast density and a FDA cleared BI-RADS breast density category.

Breast tissue density has not only been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, it also decreases the sensitivity of the mammogram and thereby may impact early detection.  Thirty-five percent of breast cancer goes undetected by mammography in women with dense breasts, as density masks the appearance of tumors (Boyd et al 2007, NEJM).  Since both dense breast tissue and cancer appear white on a mammogram, finding cancers can be analogous to looking for a snowball in a snow storm.

“One of the region’s premiere breast care centers, the ProMedica Breast Care Center at Toledo Hospital, continues to demonstrate their leadership and commitment to implement state-of-the-art technology to provide the best breast health care for their patients,” said Ralph Highnam, PhD, CEO of Matakina International.  “We are proud to provide the industry leading density solution that sites can implement for their patient population to ensure that every patient that gets a mammogram has the benefit of an objective, accurate volumetric breast density measurement.”