Thursday, October 1, 2026
With dense breast tissue reportedly present in roughly 50 percent of women — making cancer detection difficult through mammography alone and possibly leading to false negatives or delayed diagnoses — Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre has invested in a molecular breast imaging system, which is the first of its kind in New York state.
Mercy officials celebrated the technological addition at a ribbon cutting ceremony on June 27 outside Mercy’s Bishop McGann Center for Oncology, where the machine is housed. The purchase was made possible through fundraising efforts by the Friends of Mercy, which donated a check of $100,000 to the medical center in March. Proceeds from all of the organization’s annual fundraising events this year will go towards the purchase of the Mercy’s MBI technology, according to Elise Gerber, public relations manager at Mercy.
The clinical LumaGEM MBI machine is particularly useful for women who have dense breast tissue and those at a higher risk for cancer, and is considered a proven, effective supplementary screening method to mammography. Dr. Conny Ha praised the machine at the ceremony for finding abnormalities that didn’t show up on any of Mercy’s other machines, adding that the MBI tool is 99.7 percent accurate in detecting cancer.
MBI highlights metabolic activity in tumors despite breast density, leading to an earlier diagnosis. A breakthrough clinical study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology confirmed that MBI was able to detect 7.7 cancers per 1,000 women screened that were not found using mammography. Approximately 85 of these cancers were detected at an earlier stage and presented a better prognosis.
“The acquisition of the Molecular Breast Imaging system will better enable the detection of cancer to save lives,” said Ron Steimel, Mercy’s executive vice president and chief administrative officer. “This is just the latest milestone in Mercy’s longstanding dedication to the fight against cancer.”
