New Computer Helps Pinpoint Breast Cancers Machine Analyzes Breast X-Rays For Tumors That Are Missed

Like a spelling checker that helps writers find typos, a newly developed computer is spotting breast cancers that doctors miss when they read mammograms.

Rather than take the place of radiologists, this tool is intended to be a backup. And if it works as well as early testing suggests, it may find about half of the malignancies radiologists would otherwise miss.

“It’s like a second opinion,” said Dr. Maryellen L. Giger of the University of Chicago, one of the developers. She discussed the development Wednesday at an American Cancer Society conference.

The computer - called an intelligent mammography workstation - has been used to analyze more than 1,000 breast X-rays since November and will be put into regular use on an experimental basis at the University of Chicago next month.

She said the technology has been licensed to a private company, which hopes to introduce a commercial version later this year. It will probably cost about $100,000.

Dr. Barbara Smith of the Breast Health Center at Massachusetts General Hospital said the technology should be useful, especially for analyzing the mammograms of younger women. Such mammograms are often difficult to interpret.

In typical screening programs, only about five cancers are found for every 1,000 patients. However, because of the difficulty of reading the X-rays, 10-30 percent of tumors are missed.

Giger said her group has had the computer read the mammograms of women whose cancers had been overlooked, and the machine found half of them. About one-third of cancers are missed because they simply do not show up on the X-ray film. However, in perhaps 60 percent, the tumor is there but the radiologist fails to notice it.