"My aunt was 40-years old when she had breast cancer'., she said, "Then my mother developed breast cancer."
A few years ago, a mammogram found Marcia also had breast cancer. Like 25-percent of women, she has dense breast tissue which makes it hard to detect tumors.
Mayo Clinic internal medicine specialist Dr. Deborah Rhodes is familiar with the problem.
"In fact, in those women," she said, " mammography can miss one out of every two cancers."
A team of doctors at the mayo clinic developed molecular breast imaging or m-b-i.
Women get an injection of a radioactive tracer that travels to the tumor cells and lights them up.
Dr. Michael O'Connor, professor of radiologic physics at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota described the effect of the radioactive tracer.
"It's like seeing a lighthouse", he said, "You see this beacon in the breast and it's very easy to pick up the tumor."
In a study of more than 900 women, molecular breast imaging picked up three-times as many cancerous tumors as a mammogram.
Which is exactly what happened to Marcia. In the study, the m-b-i found a second tumor the mammogram missed. It changed her course of treatment.
"I was like wow," she said, "I didn't realize that the mammogram only had picked up the central tumor." After surgery and chemo, Marcia's a healthy mom getting ready to send her kids off to college.
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