Digital Breast Tomosynthesis: Concepts and Clinical Practice

Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is emerging as the standard of care for breast imaging based on improvements in both screening and diagnostic imaging outcomes. The additional information obtained from the tomosynthesis acquisition decreases the confounding effect of overlapping tissue, allowing for improved lesion detection, characterization, and localization. In addition, the quasi three-dimensional information obtained from the reconstructed DBT data set allows a more efficient imaging work-up than imaging with two-dimensional full-field digital mammography alone. Herein, the authors review the benefits of DBT imaging in screening and diagnostic breast imaging.