As a screening measure for breast cancer, digital mammography is more accurate than conventional mammography at detecting disease in women with dense breasts, women younger than 50 years of age, and premenopausal women, new research shows according to Reuters. Conventional mammography involves the creation of a breast image directly onto film. With digital mammography, by contrast, an electronic image is taken and stored in a computer. The display characteristics of the image can then be manipulated and the radiologist can use software to help detect breast abnormalities. Previous reports have shown that conventional mammography is limited in its ability to detect cancer in dense breasts, which are commonly found in younger women, according to the report released Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine. Digital mammography was developed to address this and other limitations of conventional mammography. Still, despite the apparent advantages for digital mammography, previous studies have failed to show that it is more accurate than conventional mammography, lead author Dr. Etta D. Pisano, from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and colleagues note. However, these studies only used one type of digital detector and did not have enough study participants to detect small differences in accuracy. --more 2335 Local Time 2035 GMT
