X-ray Mammography: Preliminary Tack

on Improving Its

Diagnostic Accuracy

Andrew A. Reilly

Increasing sensitivity is necessary if more early stage cancers are to be discovered. A concomitant decrease in specificity is needed to reduce the anxiety, cost of follow-up investigations, and the morbidity associated with needless biopsies. Even though mammography has proved to be a highly successful screening procedure, improvement efforts continue. Although the recent advent of digital CCD mammography holds the promise of being an avenue of improvement its full potential can only be realized through improved analyses. Statistical techniques can aid radiologists by providing quantitative estimates of the probability of malignancy in suspicious regions of the mammogram. The presentation will be largely devoted to introducing the topic and describing our as yet incomplete texture analysis.