BATON ROUGE — Millions of women identified as having dense breasts may be recommended for supplemental or additional breast cancer screenings.

"We encourage women who have dense breast tissue to consider supplemental screening," Radiologist Dr. Kristin Robinson said.

One screening you may hear about is MBI, a test developed by the Mayo Clinic. It's done in addition to a mammogram.

"MBI is a molecular breast imaging test," Dr. Robinson said.

It uses a radioactive tracer that can identify cancer cells.

"And since breast cancer is growing quickly, it's recruiting blood flow, it has more energy than the surrounding breast tissue, it will uptake that radiotracer more so than the normal tissue," she said.

And by doing so, it lights up and becomes clearer to see for a radiologist compared to the normal surrounding tissue, says Dr. Robinson.

To find out if MBI or other screening options are best for you, talk with your healthcare team.

"If you have dense breast tissue, really consider supplemental screening because we know that detects a significant number more breast cancers than mammograms alone," she said.