RakSutkaBreast cancer: the biology, the detection, and how the treatment changed.
A row of films clipped to a backlit viewing box in a darkened reading room
Reading is comparativeThe same breast against its own earlier films, and against the other side.

Section 03

Detection

Finding the disease before it announces itself is a problem of physics, of technique and of judgement, and the three did not advance together. This section also carries the one argument on this site where the evidence is genuinely contested.

5 entries · How it is looked for, and the argument about that.

Entries in this section

  • A mammography phantom image used to check imaging performance
    03.1 Mammographic technique

    Robert Egan standardised exposure and positioning in the late 1950s, which is what turned an unreliable picture into a usable one.

  • A film processor and a stack of empty film cassettes in a hospital darkroom
    03.2 Film to digital

    Replacing film with a detector changed the dose, the storage and what could be done to the image afterwards.

  • An ultrasound machine and a probe on a trolley in an empty clinical room
    03.3 Ultrasound and MRI

    One reads echoes and the other listens to atoms in a magnetic field; neither casts a shadow, which is why they see different things.

  • A stained glass microscope slide held up in gloved fingers against a bright window
    03.4 The pathology slide

    The final answer is a piece of tissue on glass, stained, and looked at by a person.

  • Two thick printed reports lying side by side on a desk with bookmarks in both
    03.5 The screening argument

    Whether population screening does more good than harm is genuinely contested, and the disagreement is about overdiagnosis rather than about whether the machine works.

Every entry on this site is one thing that was established, and who established it. The complete set is in the register.