With something as serious as breast cancer, there is no way to sugarcoat the importance of screening. It is estimated that more than 300,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, and more than 40,000 died from the disease. Early diagnosis, however, is the reason that the mortality rate is lower today than in years past. Advancements in screening, and screening awareness are keys to this positive trend continuing.

Technology-based exams like MRIs and mammograms continue to become more and more precise. Even the means of self-examination have become easier and more accurate, as more data becomes available, and easier to share thanks to technology. Here are 5 types of breast cancer screening tests.

Self-Exam

Self breast examinations are exactly what they sound like. Self-exams can be conducted at home easily and quickly. This should become a regular part of any woman’s self-care routines. It is recommended to perform a self-exam monthly. Even if you don’t plan on making self-exams regular occurrences, it’s important to know how to give yourself an exam so you can notice if anything appears different, and simply understand what to check for so you can help others with a second opinion.

Clinical Breast Exam

A clinical breast exam is conducted by a trained professional to look at your breasts, underarms, and collarbone area to find early signs of breast cancer. No matter your frequency of self-examinations, they should never replace professional examinations, which should be sought any time any sort of changes are noticed or felt.

Breast MRI

Breast MRIs use radio waves to provide high-intensity images of the breast area for doctors to examine at the most granular levels. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, analyzing these images with the help of computers can allow for discoveries beyond what even the naked eye of the best doctors could see. Machine learning is another aspect of artificial intelligence, and when utilized with these MRI images, can recognize patterns to provide predictive analysis to healthcare teams regarding a given patient’s likeliness to develop diseases such as breast cancer.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of this machine learning (in MRIs, as well as many other areas in healthcare), hospitals must be able to share data. Similar advancements in secure health data sharing are allowing this to happen.

Mammogram

Mammograms differ from MRIs in the sense that the images rendered are X-rays. Advancements in computer imagery do allow for these X-rays to be rendered in a 3-D manner. Mammograms significantly reduce the number of women who die from breast cancer each year due to their ease and success rates.

Ultrasound

If you’ve had children, a breast ultrasound will seem somewhat familiar, as it uses the same technology to create images using sound waves, which can be seen in real time. Breast ultrasounds are often used in regular preventative treatment to look for any abnormalities that may ultimately lead to a recommendation for an MRI or mammogram, but they can be just as life-saving as any other means of examination and should certainly not be avoided.

Awareness

Even with so many options for examinations, many women who are at risk for the disease simply do not conduct regular screenings. The simplicity with which you can keep an eye on the health of your breasts is at an all-time high, and sharing this information with all the women in your life should be as frequent as performing your self-exams.