For some women, digital mammography is a better bet than traditional film mammography, a new study confirms.

Women under age 50 with dense breasts who are premenopausal or perimenopausal get more accurate results with digital mammograms, say UI investigators and women’s imaging specialists Laurie Fajardo, MD, and JeongMi Park, MD.         

Fajardo was the UIOWA site principal investigator and Park a collaborating investigator for a landmark study published in 2005, known as DMIST, that compared digital to film mammography for all women. In this latest research, the trial group decided to reanalyze the original findings by looking more closely at subgroups of women.

In the original study, 33 U.S. centers enrolled more than 49,000 women and determined the breast cancer status of more than 42,000. This latest research evaluated the mammograms of the 42,000 women. The new report is published in the February issue of Radiology.

"In this latest study, we were trying to figure out which factor was most important," Fajardo said.  To do that, the DMIST Trial investigators compared the accuracy results of digital versus film mammograms in 10 different subgroups of women, looking at combinations of the three factors -- menopausal status, age, and breast density.

"No single factor was most important.  Digital mammography is very substantially better for pre- and perimenopausal women under age 50 with dense breasts."

In digital mammography, the X-ray film is replaced by solid-state detectors that convert X-rays into electrical signals. The detectors are akin to those found in digital cameras, and the electrical signals are used to produce breast images that can be viewed on a computer screen.  The denser the breast tissue, the more difficult it is to detect breast cancer on a mammogram, “because dense tissue shows up as white on a mammogram and cancer shows up as white, too.  Older women tend to have less dense breasts than younger women, but not always.”"

The take-home message is that certain women should ask for digital mammograms.  If a mammogram report doesn't include information on breast density, Fajardo and Park suggest women ask their doctor or mammogram technologist to provide that.

Diane Bradley (left) is living proof that digital mammography gives patients the best chance of having a breast lesion diagnosed early. With Bradley is UI radiologist Laurie Fajardo, MD, an expert in the new technology.

For more information:

UI Breast Imaging

Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center

Cancer Information Service

Laurie Fajardo, MD

JeongMi Park, MD