The Women’s Center at Temple Health—Chestnut Hill Hospital has all the comforts of home.

And in fact, that’s what it once was — the Julia Hebard Marsden House, an exquisite red brick Colonial Revival home fronted by a Doric portico. Built in 1903, it was acquired by the hospital and converted to seven staff apartments in 1959.

In 1977, it became the hospital’s Women’s Center, where thousands of women have gone – and continue to go – for their mammograms.

That homelike impression is one of its main draws, says Richard Newell, hospital president and chief executive officer.

“My wife and I live in Bucks County, and my mother-in-law lives in Montgomery County,” he says. “They’ve been coming to the Women’s Center for 20 years. They appreciate the treatment from the staff, but also that homey feel. You don’t feel like you’re walking into a doctor’s office when you walk into that colonial home. It’s a different type of experience.”

The building may be more than a century old, but treatment at the Women’s Center is state of the art. It has offered 3D mammography for more than a decade, and as precise as the imaging afforded by the center’s two 3D mammography machines, it is about to get even better. With a $400,000 Statewide Local Share Account grant secured by state Rep. Tarik Khan and state Sen. Art Haywood, the Women’s Center is getting a significant upgrade – new mammography machines that are even more precise than the current machines, and light years ahead of the previous 2D machines, which the Women’s Center stopped using over a decade ago.

Once the hospital has cleared the state’s funding process and issued purchase orders, the new machines will be installed within two months, Newell said.

To understand how much better 3D mammography is than 2D – and how the new 3D machines will be superior to the current machines – consider the following.

For a start, breast abnormalities are far more apparent with 3D mammography than they were with 2D, explains Audrina Abrams, mammography modality manager for the Women’s Center.

“With 3D mammograms, you see slices and you’re able to see things that pop out at you. So that really is the difference,” she said.

The new 3D machines, when they arrive, are even more advanced. They’re high definition, with improved contrast resolution, and they integrate artificial intelligence to enhance image clarity.

It’s like seeing the difference between high-definition and regular TV, Abrams said. “With high-def TV, we saw all the definition and the colors popped more,” she said. “What we have now is good, but what we are getting is like the high-def version of that. We’ll be able to see more clearly and more quickly than we do with the current machines.”

Medical technology has about a 10- to 12-year shelf life, Newell added, so the machines the hospital is using now represents the current standards. The new machines will offer an even higher level of care.

All of these improvements are especially useful for women with dense breast tissues, Newell said. Even as the technology stands now, 3D differentiates from the rest of the breast tissue, especially in those women, he said, because the images are viewed as thin slices. With the new machines, abnormalities will stand out even more.

The fact that these machines are in the Women’s Center makes getting a mammogram less daunting than a trip to a hospital mammography center. Roughly 80 percent of the women who frequent the Women’s Center are repeat customers, Newell says, and most of those are from Northwest Philadelphia neighborhoods.

“It’s not as intimidating or overwhelming,” Newell said. “So, we truly do pull from a very wide area. Even people who have moved away come back to the Women’s Center. We have women who come from New Jersey because the care is so personal and we have mammographers (radiologists who specialize in reading mammograms) in the building. If there’s any kind of discrepancy they can meet with the patient immediately. We also do biopsies on site. That’s not the kind of tender loving care you see anymore.”

To schedule a mammogram – and Abrams sincerely hopes you will – contact the Women’s Center at 800-TEMPLE-MED (central scheduling).