Breast biopsies, which can conclusively diagnose the presence of a tumor, suffer from a number of procedural limitations. One big issue is that during the excision of every sample, the physician can’t easily confirm whether the taken tissue really does come from the targeted lesion. Hologic‘s Brevera biopsy system has now been approved in Europe to provide such functionality, allowing the doctor performing a biopsy to quickly pass high quality, useful samples to the pathologist for review.

The Bevera features the company’s Cor-Lumina imaging technology, which feeds tissue slices taken by a slicer at the tip of the biopsy needle directly into a multi-section cartridge and images those on a nearby screen.

As every slice is excised, it automatically travels through the biopsy needle and a plastic tube into a special cartridge. Once the cartridge is given a sample, it images it under a microscope and rotates itself to align the next empty slot to accept another slice of tissue. The physician can quickly review the image on the screen to see whether it resembles the structure of a lesion, and if it looks good, further slicing may be unnecessary. This can speed up biopsies while resulting in reduced complications for the women undergoing such procedures.