The fight against breast cancer – as in any fight – begins with seeing and locating the enemy. Sharon Regional Health System’s Diagnostic and Imaging Center in Hermitage does just that.

Among the imaging center’s capabilities are breast MRIs and digital mammography, said Dr. Betty Shindel.

Digital mammography uses a technology similar to that of a digital camera, Dr. Shindel said. It takes interior pictures of the breast and allows the image to be zoomed and manipulated, the resolutions and contrasts altered, and problems locate and identified more easily.

That makes it easier to pick up cancers in young women, women with dense breasts, or premenopausal women, Dr. Shindel said.

Digital mammography also lets technicians snap X-ray pictures more quickly, much like the faster shutter speed in some digital cameras allows. It lets them get more images to manipulate and review, Dr. Shindel said.

During a mammography, the breast is forced into a compressed position for imaging purposes and the woman must hold still, Dr. Shindel said. By snapping the shots more quickly, the amount of time spent in discomfort is reduced, she said. The quicker speed of snapping interior pictures of the breast also reduces exposure to radiation.

And because the film doesn’t have to be developed, women don’t have to wait as long for other procedures like biopsies, Dr. Shindel said.

Imaging is a necessary first step in any cancer treatment, but Dr. Donald Keenan said it’s also a first step in confirming the many benign lumps and tumors and other problems with breasts.

A breast surgeon for 10 years, Dr. Keenan said when people feel a lump, they immediately believe they have cancer until physicians can show otherwise. Imaging helps them get a clearer picture of what they’re dealing with.

Digital mammographies also allow doctors to perform less invasive biopsies, he said. They are frequently nonsurgical now, using a long needle to get a tissue sample. Keenan said that’s a major difference in breast care from what was done in 1999.

In all, regular mammogram screening reduces breast cancer mortality from 30 to 60 percent, depending on the study, Shindel said.

“Every time that you get it early, that means it may not be invasive or it’s still confined to the breast,” she said. “The longer you let it sit in the breast, it’s going to get bigger and bigger. And when breast cancer metastasizes, it’ll get into your lymph nodes and go to the other parts of your body.”

It’s not just the technology at the Diagnostic and Imaging Center that’s so good, Keenan said. He lauded the entire program and the many staffers and specialists that make it happen, from those who read the mammograms to the pathologists and nurses involved.

Dr. Keenan will give a breast cancer overview at 5 p.m. Oct. 13 in the Diagnostic & Imaging Center at 2435 Garden Way in Hermitage. Dr. Shindel will be among the presenters at a noon seminar Oct. 21 in the center on the “Latest Technology for the Early Detection of Breast Cancer.”