The American College of Radiology (ACR) has announced the appointment of Etta D. Pisano, MD, as chief science officer of the ACR Center for Research and Innovation.

Etta Pisano

Etta Pisano, MD

Pisano’s career has led to academic appointments including: founding chief of breast imaging in the department of radiology and vice dean for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine; dean of the Medical School at the University of South Carolina; and most recently vice chair of research in the department of radiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and professor at Harvard.

In parallel, Pisano has led landmark clinical research trials studies while serving as the chair of the ACRIN Breast Imaging Committee (1998-2008) and Principal Investigator of the Digital Mammography Screening Trial (DMIST). DMIST accrued 49,528 women in a study comparing digital to film mammography, the results of which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 and which changed the breast cancer screening guidelines and reimbursement.

Pisano continues to add to her legacy in the area of breast imaging and is now the principal investigator of the Tomosynthesis Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (TMIST). Tripling DMIST’s accrual, this trial of nearly 165,000 healthy women is open to accrual in the United States and Canada. TMIST is the first breast cancer screening trial since the 1980s and aims to prove the value of screening in the modern era of tomosynthesis. TMIST will create the world’s largest aggregation of data, images, and biospecimens arising from a clinical research trial.

Pisano is a past president of the Association of University Radiologists and American Association for Women Radiologists, a gold medalist of the American Roentgen Ray Society and Radiological Society of North America, recipient of the Earl B. Higgins Achievement in Diversity Award at the Medical University of South Carolina, and received honors for her faculty diversity work at the University of North Carolina.