April 5, 2007

Study faults breast scans

Computer systems designed to make mammograms more accurate turn out to make them less reliable, according to the largest study to evaluate the increasingly popular high-tech versions of the common test for breast cancer. The study of more than 429,000 mammograms found that \"computer-aided detection\" systems did not help radiologists find more tumors and significantly increased the number of false alarms. The computer-aided detection systems require a radiologist \"who knows what he or she is doing,\" said Dr. Brien Shah, a radiologist with Advanced Diagnostic Imaging, president of the Saginaw Valley chapter of the Michigan Radiological Society and a staff member at the Wayne State University Medical School. \"It\'s a useful tool, but it\'s not the end all,\" said Shah. \"(The machines) invite you to take a second look. They can be a little hypersensitive.\"

Subscribe to Today@Wayne

Direct to your inbox each week

Related articles