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Breast Cancer Screening and Prevention

Interpreting Mammograms

Summary & Participants

While a mammogram is one of the most important tests a woman can take, its findings often seem complex to many women. Learn what doctors look for when they interpret x-ray films of the breast.

Medically Reviewed On: July 11, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: One of the most important exams a woman can take is a mammogram. But some women are unsure of exactly what this test can reveal, and there are many common misperceptions about this screening procedure. So, what exactly is a mammogram and what does it show?

HILDEGARD TOTH, MD: A mammogram is an x-ray of the breast, consisting of two pictures per breast that we obtain generally on an annual basis.

The current recommendations are that an asymptomatic patient should begin screening once a year after 40 years old. If you have a first-degree relative that has had diagnosed breast cancer in the premenopausal period, so for instance if your sister was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 42, if you are 32, you should begin screening at that age, every year thereafter.

What we look for on a mammogram of course is small breast cancers. How they manifest themselves on a mammogram is by showing us a mass or a lump.

The most common presentation for breast cancer would be what is called a spiculated mass. That is a white area on the mammogram that sort of looks like a star-burst appearance. It has lines, straight lines emanating to the mass, and that is very suspicious for a cancer.

Other things we look for are tenting, or changes in the normal very harmonious architecture of the breast, called architectural distortion.

We also look for calcifications, white spots, granules similar to grains of salt.

ANNOUNCER: A common misunderstanding assumes these deposits are related to how much calcium a woman consumes in her diet.

HILDEGARD TOTH, MD: Calcium intake has absolutely nothing to do with the calcium that we detect on mammography. The calcium that we see on the mammogram or anywhere else on the body is really just a process that the body has to facilitate metabolism.

ANNOUNCER: There are several terms associated with calcifications.

HILDEGARD TOTH, MD: Monomorphic is a term that describes calcifications. It indicates a uniformity of shape and size for calcifications and also implies benignity, as opposed to the term pleomorphic, which describes varying shapes, varying sizes, varying densities. That term would lead you to think more of a malignant process.

Microcalcifications are very fine particles of calcium that are deposited in a region of the breast. There are many kinds of microcalcifications. There are the benign kind and a malignant type.

The benign type of calcification, are extremely common. They can occur, probably one in three women will have these types of calcifications.

Macrocalifications are the large, course calcifications that are found in the breast. They are very commonly seen on mammography. They are of no clinical significance.

ANNOUNCER: And there are other common findings associated with breast tissue.

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