Digital mammography: current technology

Direct digital mammography (DDM) is currently undergoing clinical trial in the United States. The likely outcome of the current clinical trials is that DDM will be found to have appropriate diagnostic accuracy for clinical use for both screening and diagnostic use. Telemammography and the electronic storage of breast images will be shown to be feasible. Computer readable images will be found to help the further implementation of computer assisted breast cancer detection and in the classification of lesions in the breast that could be cancer into benign and malignant categories. Over the next five years new machine and software developments will show that DDM has diagnostic advantages over conventional screen film mammography, especially when coupled with computer aided detection and classification.