Digital mammography in the United Kingdom: the reality

This talk will discuss the outcomes from the sites currently piloting full-field digital screening and will outline progress on the key outstanding issues.

To date, all the equipment has been technically satisfactory and produces good image quality at an acceptable dose. Several units have been shown to work on mobile vans. Translating this into safe and affordable screening has been less successful.

No full-field digital mammography machine will work at its best without patient archiving and communications systems and a radiology information system. Integration into the current Information Technology structures has been hampered by parallel development and implementation work on the national Information Technology programme and a national reluctance to spend local money on short-term fixes.

The current differences in cost will not be offset by savings in film and film-handling processes, so improvements in throughput (i.e. shorter appointments and/or longer days) are required, and this has not been fully addressed.