In the future, digital mammography may provide many benefits over standard mammography equipment. Digital mammography has the potential to significantly reduce the amount of time required to acquire a mammogram from 10 to 15 minutes to less than a minute. This will provide a shorter, more comfortable exam for the woman and possibly allow mammography facilities to conduct more mammograms in a day. Digital images can also be manipulated to correct for under or over exposure. If under or over exposure occurs with a standard film-based mammography system women have to undergo a repeat mammogram before leaving the facility.
Many radiologists support digital mammography as an effective tool to screen for breast cancer.
In an open letter to the FDA published in the December 1999 issue of Diagnostic Imaging , Dr. Etta Pisano, Chief of Breast Imaging and Professor of Radiology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, supported the use of digital mammography. We believe that digital mammography has advantages over standard screen-film mammography that are readily apparent from the study of phantom images and the physical parameters that can be measured. CAD helps radiologists more accurately detect breast cancer by marking suspicious areas on digitized mammograms. The data compared hard copies of digital breast images on film to conventional mammography films finding that digital mammography is as effective at detecting breast cancer as standard film mammograms. A separate study revealed that the digital mammography scanner showed a slight advantage in the visibility of breast tissue at the skin line.