Mercy Women’s Center and Breast MRI of Oklahoma announced Nov. 24 its selection as a beta test site for Edge breast magnetic resonance imaging, a proposed upgrade for existing Rodeo breast-dedicated MRI. Mercy will be one of only three sites in the world assisting in this new technology.

Edge technology was recently installed at Mercy by Aurora Imaging Technology, Inc. of North Andover, Mass. Officials said patients being scanned at Mercy will now be afforded sharper images, with slices less than 1 millimeter (0.8mm), the thinnest in the industry, even when all competing technologies are considered.

“This will allow us to more accurately diagnose and stage breast cancer,” Rebecca Stough, M.D., radiologic director of Mercy Women’s Center and clinical director of Breast MRI of Oklahoma, said. “The quality of the three dimensional images allows us to identify even the earliest breast cancer with greater sensitivity. The incredibly sharp pictures also allow for better evaluation of the margins of abnormalities, thus reducing the number of false positives by distinguishing benign from malignant.”

Breast MRI was introduced nationwide in the early 2000s, and Mercy Women’s Center was the first in the state of Oklahoma to adopt an active program, beginning one year prior to the availability of breast-dedicated units that are now proliferating worldwide. Stough has supervised or interpreted more than 10,000 breast MRIs, comparable to any of the pioneering sites in the nation.