The New England Journal of Medicine
e-mail icon  FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |    Advanced Search
Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe
 
A correction has been published: N Engl J Med 2006;355(17):1840.

Original Article
PreviousPrevious
Volume 353:1773-1783 October 27, 2005 Number 17
NextNext

Diagnostic Performance of Digital versus Film Mammography for Breast-Cancer Screening
Etta D. Pisano, M.D., Constantine Gatsonis, Ph.D., Edward Hendrick, Ph.D., Martin Yaffe, Ph.D., Janet K. Baum, M.D., Suddhasatta Acharyya, Ph.D., Emily F. Conant, M.D., Laurie L. Fajardo, M.D., Lawrence Bassett, M.D., Carl D'Orsi, M.D., Roberta Jong, M.D., Murray Rebner, M.D., for the Digital Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (DMIST) Investigators Group

 Sign up for free e-toc
 

This Article
-Full Text
- PDF
-PDA Full Text
-PowerPoint Slide Set
-Supplementary Material

Commentary
-Editorial
 by Dershaw, D. D.
-Letters

Tools and Services
-Add to Personal Archive
-Add to Citation Manager
-Notify a Friend
-E-mail When Cited
-E-mail When Letters Appear

More Information
-Related Article
-PubMed Citation
ABSTRACT

Background Film mammography has limited sensitivity for the detection of breast cancer in women with radiographically dense breasts. We assessed whether the use of digital mammography would avoid some of these limitations.

Methods A total of 49,528 asymptomatic women presenting for screening mammography at 33 sites in the United States and Canada underwent both digital and film mammography. All relevant information was available for 42,760 of these women (86.3 percent). Mammograms were interpreted independently by two radiologists. Breast-cancer status was ascertained on the basis of a breast biopsy done within 15 months after study entry or a follow-up mammogram obtained at least 10 months after study entry. Receiver-operating-characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate the results.

Results In the entire population, the diagnostic accuracy of digital and film mammography was similar (difference between methods in the area under the ROC curve, 0.03; 95 percent confidence interval, –0.02 to 0.08; P=0.18). However, the accuracy of digital mammography was significantly higher than that of film mammography among women under the age of 50 years (difference in the area under the curve, 0.15; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.05 to 0.25; P=0.002), women with heterogeneously dense or extremely dense breasts on mammography (difference, 0.11; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.04 to 0.18; P=0.003), and premenopausal or perimenopausal women (difference, 0.15; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.05 to 0.24; P=0.002).

Conclusions The overall diagnostic accuracy of digital and film mammography as a means of screening for breast cancer is similar, but digital mammography is more accurate in women under the age of 50 years, women with radiographically dense breasts, and premenopausal or perimenopausal women. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00008346 [ClinicalTrials.gov] .)


Source Information

From the Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering, the Biomedical Research Imaging Center, and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill (E.D.P.); the Center for Statistical Sciences, Brown University, Providence, R.I. (C.G., S.A.); the Department of Radiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago (E.H.); the Departments of Medical Imaging (M.Y., R.J.) and Medical Biophysics (M.Y.), University of Toronto, Toronto; the Department of Radiology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston (J.K.B.); the Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia (E.F.C.); the Department of Radiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City (L.L.F.); the Department of Radiology, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles (L.B.); the Department of Radiology, Emory University, Atlanta (C.D.); and the Department of Radiology, William Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, Mich. (M.R.).

This article was published at www.nejm.org on September 16, 2005.

Address reprint requests to Dr. Pisano at etta_pisano{at}med.unc.edu.

Full Text of this Article


Related Letters:

Digital and Film Mammography
Crystal P., Strano S., Keen J. D., Ebell M. H., Gatsonis C., Pisano E. D., Hendrick E.
Extract | Full Text | PDF  
N Engl J Med 2006; 354:765-767, Feb 16, 2006. Correspondence

This article has been cited by other articles:



HOME  |  SUBSCRIBE  |  SEARCH  |  CURRENT ISSUE  |  PAST ISSUES  |  COLLECTIONS  |  PRIVACY  |  HELP  |  beta.nejm.org

Comments and questions? Please contact us.

The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2008 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.