Improved mammography

A team of researchers has found that digitised mammograms, the X-ray cross sections of breast tissue that doctors use to search for cancer, are actually interpreted more accurately by radiologists once they have been “compressed” using techniques similar to those used to lessen the memory demand of images in digital cameras.

Though compression strips away much of the original data, it still leaves intact those features that physicians need most to diagnose cancer effectively. Perhaps equally important, digitisation could bring mammography to many outlying communities via mobile equipment and dial-up Internet connections.

“Any technique that improves the performance of radiologists is helpful, but this also means that mammograms can be taken in remote places that are under served by the medical community,” said Bradley J. Lucier, who developed the file-compression method and is a professor of mathematics and computer science at Purdue University, West Lafayette. “The mammograms can then be sent electronically to radiologists, who can read the digitised versions knowing they will do at least as well as the original mammograms.”