Which imaging modality is often used as adjunct imaging to mammography in dense breasts to improve detection?

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Dense breast tissue reduces the sensitivity of mammography because both dense tissue and many tumors appear white on the image, making cancers harder to spot. To improve detection in these breasts, ultrasound is often used as adjunct imaging. Ultrasound uses high-frequency sound waves, has no ionizing radiation, and can distinguish solid masses from cysts, helping to identify cancers that mammography may miss in dense tissue. It’s particularly helpful for evaluating palpable findings or ambiguous mammographic results and can guide biopsy. It complements mammography rather than replaces it, though it has limitations like operator dependence and a tendency for false positives. The other options don’t fit as adjuncts in this scenario: additional X-ray imaging wouldn’t provide new information beyond mammography, angiography targets vessels and is invasive, and bone scan assesses bone metastases rather than breast tissue lesions.