Radiology

Advanced Medical Imaging to Support Every Stage of Cancer Care

What to Expect

When your Fred Hutch team recommends any type of radiology care, we’ll explain why it’s needed, what the scan or procedure will be like and how to prepare. We’re here to answer your questions, help with scheduling and make the process as easy as possible for you. If you have questions, reach out to your care team.

Medical imaging allows your health care team to see certain types of structures and activity inside your body. It’s an essential part of cancer care, from screening and diagnosis to treatment and follow-up. At Fred Hutch Cancer Center, we offer the full spectrum of radiology services you’re likely to need.

Our expert radiologists use advanced imaging methods to:

  • Screen for and diagnose disease
  • Determine the extent (stage) of cancer
  • Design your personalized treatment plan
  • Guide procedures, like taking tissue samples for testing
  • Treat cancer with chemotherapy, radiation or other methods
  • Monitor how well your treatment is working
  • Check your health after treatment 

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Breast Imaging 

A mammogram uses X-rays to take images of your breast to detect cancer. With these images, a radiologist can see abnormal areas — even when they are too small for you or your health care provider to feel. At Fred Hutch, we use 3D mammography, also called digital breast tomosynthesis. It takes many pictures at once so physicians can see the breast tissue in detail, layer by layer.

To get a clearer image of certain tissues, your team may first give you contrast (dye). Based on the tissue they want to see, this could be a substance you drink or get as an injection into a blood vessel or in some other way. The contrast appears bright on the X-ray image. 

Breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is another tool we use to screen for breast cancer and plan treatment. It uses strong magnetic fields, rather than X-rays, to create an image.

In certain situations, a breast ultrasound can give your team important information. Ultrasound technology makes pictures using sound waves that echo off your tissues. A breast ultrasound may help reveal if a mass is solid or filled with fluid, or it may give your team a different view of an area that looked abnormal on a mammogram.

Physicians also use ultrasound, X-rays and MRI to guide procedures like breast biopsies. By watching the image on the screen, they can carefully direct a needle to take out cells for testing.

Fred Hutch is recognized as a Designated Comprehensive Breast Imaging Center by the American College of Radiology.

Learn More About Breast Cancer Screening

Computed Tomography (CT) Scan

A CT scan uses a special X-ray machine to take detailed pictures of the inside of your body and make a 3D image. CT scans show organs, bones, blood vessels and other types of tissue. For the scan, you lie on a table inside the CT machine, and an X-ray tube moves around you.

You might be given contrast through an intravenous (IV) tube in your vein, by mouth or as an enema. The contrast moves through your blood vessels and organs and makes these tissues easier to see in the images. 

Many people with different kinds of cancer have CT scans to help make a diagnosis, plan care and monitor the effects of treatment. If you’re getting radiation therapy, you’ll have a CT simulation scan first. This helps your team pinpoint the area to treat and find the best way to position you for each treatment session.

For certain types of cancer, CT can be a useful screening tool. Low-dose CT is an effective way to detect lung cancer early in people who are at high risk. Fred Hutch is recognized as a Designated Lung Cancer Screening Center by the American College of Radiology.

Interventional Radiology

Interventional radiologists are physicians who diagnose and treat conditions with minimally invasive methods guided by imaging. Using technologies like X-rays, ultrasound or computed tomography, they see inside your body in real time as they do a procedure. This allows them to target the right spot. 

In some cases, the procedure is done with a needle pushed through the skin. In other cases, it may involve a small incision, such as to insert a thin tube (catheter). 

Examples include:

  • Needle biopsies – taking out a sample of cells or fluid for testing 
  • Thermal ablation procedures – inserting a probe that gets warm or cold to destroy tumor cells 
  • Embolization procedures – putting chemotherapy drugs or radioactive particles into blood vessels that feed tumors 

Interventional radiologists offer a range of other treatments that may help with cancer symptoms or the effects of treatment — like injecting special cement into a vertebra to strengthen it or quieting the signals from a nerve to relieve pain. The interventional radiologist may use ultrasound, X-ray fluoroscopy or CT to help guide procedures, such as biopsies or injections. 

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) 

MRI uses a strong magnet, radio waves and a computer to make detailed 3D images. The machine takes cross-sectional pictures, sometimes called slices, from different angles and combines them.

A traditional MRI scanner is a large tube, or chamber, surrounded by a circular magnet. For the scan, you lie on a table that goes into the chamber. Like for CT, you might be given contrast by IV to help certain parts of your body show up clearly on the images. 

In cancer care, physicians typically use MRI to find tumors, look for signs that cancer has spread, help plan treatment, and see how treatment is working for you.

Often, a CT scan or other method will give your care team the information they need. But sometimes they may recommend an MRI. It’s a good way to see soft tissues that might not show up well in other types of imaging. Even different types of tissue within the same organ are easy to see in a magnetic resonance image. 

Whole-Body MRI

Whole-body MRI is sometimes promoted as a way to screen for cancer in people with no symptoms. At Fred Hutch, we don’t offer or recommend whole-body MRI as a screening tool because there’s no strong evidence that this approach is good at finding cancer early for most people. But it is likely to find harmless “abnormalities,” which may cause anxiety and lead to follow-up exams, tests and procedures that carry risks.

Learn More About Whole-Body MRI

Nuclear Medicine

Nuclear medicine scans, also called molecular imaging scans, do more than make pictures of the structures inside your body. These scans also give your care team details about your body’s function, or how it is working.

Before the scan, a small amount of a radioactive substance is injected into your bloodstream. This radiotracer travels through your body and builds up in certain places. Diseased cells take up the tracer in a different way than healthy cells. The tracer gives off energy that can be detected by a scanner with a special camera. Using data from the scanner, a computer makes a picture showing where the radiation is.

The nuclear scan we use most often is a PET/CT (positron emission tomography/computed tomography) scan. In a PET/CT, both PET and CT scans are done. Then the two pictures are merged. Similarly, we offer PET/MRI. It combines the power of PET to show where cancer cells are with the ability of MRI to show soft tissues.

We also perform SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography) scans, usually with a CT scan at the same time (SPECT/CT). This helps us tell if a patient on molecular therapy should keep getting it. Molecular therapies use drugs to deliver radiation directly to cancer cells at higher levels than used for nuclear scans.

Learn More About Molecular Imaging and Therapy

Ultrasound

Ultrasound is an imaging technology that relies on sound waves. Your care team can use it to look at the structure and movement of your organs as well as blood flow.

An ultrasound machine is made up of a scanning device (sometimes called a wand, probe or transducer), a computer and a video screen. The scanner sends out sound waves and listens for echoes from tissues in your body. The computer uses the sound waves to make an image.

Often, ultrasound is done by pressing a wand against your skin. There are also specialized forms of ultrasound using a slim probe that’s put into your body. For example, a probe can be put through your mouth into your lungs or your stomach to see what’s happening in or near these organs.

Physicians sometimes use ultrasound to guide a procedure. Images on the screen can show them where to put a needle to draw fluid or cells out of your body or where to place a tiny marker so your team can precisely target your tumor with radiation therapy.

X-ray

For an X-ray, a machine sends a beam of radiation through your body to a special detector. A computer uses data from the detector to create an image. Soft tissues block some of the radiation and show up on the image as a shade of gray. Dense tissues block more radiation and show up as white.

An X-ray may help your care team spot a tumor. (A mammogram is a special X-ray to look for tumors in the breast). Or it may show another concern that could be related to cancer or its treatment, like changes in bone or infection in the lungs.