Digital Mammography : 8th International Workshop IWDM 2006 Manchester UK June 18 21 2006 Proceedings Breast Density CAD Clinical Practice Tomosynthesis Registration and Multiple View Mammography Physics Models Poster Session Wavelet Methods Full Field Digital Mammography Segmentation. This volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science series records th the proceedings of the 8 International Workshop on Digital Mammography (IWDM) which was held in Manchester UK June 18–21 2006. The meetings bringtogetheradiversesetofresearchers(physicists mathematicians computer scientists engineers) clinicians (radiologists surgeons) and representatives of industry who are jointly committed to developing technology not just for its ownsake but to supportclinicians inthe earlydetection andsubsequentpatient management of breast cancer. The conference series was initiated at a 1993 meeting of the SPIE in San Jose with subsequent meetings hosted every two years by researchers around the world. Previous meetings were held in York Chicago Nijmegen Toronto Bremen and North Carolina. It is interesting to reect on the changes that have occurred during the past 13 years. Then the dominant technology was lm screen mammography; now it is full eld digital mammography. Then there were few screening programmes world wide; now there are many. Then there was the hope that computer aided detection (CAD) of early signs of cancer might be possible; now CAD is not only a reality but (more importantly) a commercially led clinical reality. Then algorithmswerealmostentirelyheuristicwithlittleclinicalsupport;nowthereis arequirementforsubstantialclinicalsupportforanyalgorithmthatisdeveloped and published. However upon reection could we have predicted with absolute certainty what would be the key questions to be addressed over the subsequent (say) six years No! That is the nature joy and frustration of research. There are more blind alleys to explore than there are rich veins that bring gold (in all senses of that analogy!).