why do mammograms require the breasts to be squished flat when we are able to take X-rays and ultrasounds through fat and muscle masses?

Question

I’ve never had a mammogram so I actually don’t know how it works. Only heard the jokes about how they squish your breasts and that it hurts. We were talking about how men can have breast cancer so why don’t they get mammograms? (Maybe they do). Then we laughed as we pretended to slip a tiny man boob into an imaginary mammogram machine (that I’ve never seen).

So I thought they can do X-rays and stuff. Why do they *have* to torture you to get the results. Did some sick doctor invent the machine, laughing the whole time about how evil and unnecessary it is? /s

Biology tag? Idk.

In: Biology

Answer 1

kinda like pounding a chicken or butterflying, uniform thickness makes it cook evenly, or as the analogy translates, so the mass differential doesn’t throw a false positive.