<Jean (and any others who might know) Has MRI been used to look at the structure of the breast?> Some ultrasound texts and articles, and some embryology and a few medical texts about breast development and breast disease form most of the basis for the small amount I know about the enormous subject of breast structure at different stages in life. Remember, the breast is the only organ that is not completely developed at birth. That being said, I believe MRI is done with actual x-rays, whereas ultrasound is not. For that reason alone, I would think one would only "research" with MRI if there were a legitimate need for diagnostic information. Too much potential for tissue destruction/tumor formation with repeated exposure to x-rays I have heard. Curiosity is not sufficient reason to take this risk. There is a diagnostic ultrasound procedure called ductography in which a cannula is painlessly placed through the nipple pore and a dye is injected into a duct to allow visualization of its shape, course and diameter. (If anyone has a relative who is a diagnostic radiologist, maybe such a study of just one duct with photographs of the result wouldn't even require much funding. I would suspect that simply expressing would remove the dye!! Volunteer pregnant and lactating models, anyone? Maybe not just kidding.) Lanfranchi ME, Chapter 7: Ultrasound examination of ducts, Breast Ultrasound, 2000, Marban Books, New York, NY Great ultrasound of ducts (p.17) I do think that facilitating communication between the lactation community and the forensic pathology/breast surgery/medical school anatomy lab community might alert them to the fact that they can supply valuable information to us specifically, if they are aware of precisely what controversies we are debating, what processes we are wanting to study, etc. Any professionals, physicians especially, who have connections with those communities, should be asked to spread the word and some articles about new research and controversy. There was an interesting study done by Russo and Russo in which (postmortem!) dissection of whole breasts of (43) women of different reproductive histories and ages and developmental stages from pre-puberal through postmenopausal was represented in a most interesting graph. (Every pregnancy, whether it only begins, and then ends prematurely through any process, brings about a series of changes in breast tissue, which involute at least partially if no lactation occurs. And, commenting on another thread discussed this week, the breast development advances somewhat with each menstral cycle, so despite her chronological age or age of menarche, thelarche (breast development) begins before actual menses, and the cumulative # of menstrual cycles a young woman has undergone before her first pregnancy would have some impact on the amount of breast tissue she had to "work with", at least at the onset of the first pregnancy.) The study described and the graph depicted what % of tissue was connective (stroma) and what was glandular (parenchyma) and at what development that glandular tissue was at various stages of reproductive life. I had to create a simple garden metaphor for myself while I was reading it because I am still very much a novice at such deep reading. If S stands for Soil and Stroma, and P stands for Plant and Parenchyma, then you could imagine how the roots of a plant arborize into the soil, and see the similarities of how the parenchyma arborizes into the stroma during developmental processes of breast growth. The graph also depicted the % of each that resulted with reversal of the processes between pregnancy/lactation events. It is well worth looking up. Russo J, Russo IH, Development of the Human Mammary Gland in: The Mammary Gland, Development, Regulation, and Function ed. by Neville MC, Daniels CW 1987 Plenum Press, NY. pp 67-93. Jean ************ K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC Dayton, Ohio USA *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html