Breast Calcifications Scrutinized

The images on Betty Anne Bevis' mammogram didn't look quite right.

Like about 50 percent of women, Bevis has tiny deposits of calcium in her breast tissue that look like white specks on X-rays.

Most of the time, these deposits -- called calcifications -- are not associated with breast cancer.

But on that cold winter day in 2003, Dr. William Marasco of Cape Diagnostic Imaging in West Yarmouth, Mass., had misgivings about what he saw on the mammography film.

Maybe the calcifications were clumping in tight bunches or branching off into straight lines, which could indicate they were mixed in with rapidly dividing cancerous cells inside tiny tunnels of duct tissue.

Whatever the prompt, Marasco urged Bevis to undergo a biopsy that same day.

"He said it was probably nothing, but let's take a look at it," says Bevis, who is now 52.

To her surprise, the noodle of tissue collected in the biopsy sampling contained cancer cells.

"I was fortunate," she says. "It was early stage."

Still, the mother of two ended up having four lumpectomies, four rounds of chemotherapy and 33 doses of radiation to remove and destroy abnormal cells associated with her case of ductal carcinoma in situ, which means the malignancy has not spread beyond the milk ducts into other breast tissue.

Like Bevis, an increasing number of women are being diagnosed early with noninvasive cancer.