Digital Mammography Screening

Despite the success of these programs, mammography screening in Europe, and mammography worldwide, lags far behind in its use of modern information technology.

Presently, the complete mammography screening process is based on X-ray film. Quality assurance, image transport, image archiving, image hanging, double-reading, and training have all been built and optimized for film-based mammography.

Thus, there exists a decisive information technology gap between film-based mammography and other digital imaging modalities, such as Ultrasound and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) systems. This gap prevents the efficient use of electronic patient records, tele-medicine, computer-assistance, and the more efficient collaboration in mammography.

There are two main reasons for this technology gap in mammography:

First, digital mammography machines and detectors only became commercially available in 1999 (General Electric, and now Fischer, Siemens, Fuji and Lorad-Hologic). Second, suitable Soft-Copy Reading (SCR) systems are lacking. Soft-copy reading software and technology, which is needed to enable radiologists to read from high-resolution computer displays, was identified around 1999 by the international industrial and medical communities as the most pressing information technology bottleneck for the uptake of digital mammography.

The 2-year SCREEN project started in January 2000 with the objective to develop a high-throughput soft-copy reading system that can replace film-based reading in European mammography screening. The SCREEN project brought this to a successful completion in early 2002, and the first marketable version of the system appeared in April 2002.

(SCREEN, IST-1999-10246, was funded by the European Commission within the 5th Framework.)