FDA plans new regulations on mammograms in effort to help women with dense breasts

Mammograms can sometimes fail to detect tumors in women who have a higher breast density. As a result, the FDA said it's planning new regulations for informing women about their tissue type and screening options.

Dr. Sarah Friedewald, the chief of breast imaging at Northwestern Medicine, explains that denser breasts have less fat and more tissue. It can be more difficult to spot tumors in dense tissue in mammograms, since both show up as white in the images.

"About 40[%] to 50% of the women in the country actually have dense breast tissue. It just makes it a little bit harder for us to find cancer on the mammogram," Friedewald said.