Radiology Question for the Week of May 18, 2020

Question:

Is breast tomosynthesis considered a 3-dimensional (3D) study?

Answer:

While vendors and the lay press often describe breast tomosynthesis as “three-dimensional” (3D), for coding purposes, breast tomosynthesis is not a 3D study. For this reason, the American College of Radiology (ACR) collaborated with the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) Editorial Panel and Relative Value Scale Unit Update Committee to discourage the use of the terms “2D” and “3D.” In practice, breast tomosynthesis is similar to acquiring tomographic images during conventional tomography (eg, intravenous pyelogram) and viewing the individual tomographic images in a stacked set. Therefore, this is not a 3D study for the purposes of CPT® coding.

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