Increase in Mammography Screening in Europe

Because breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death among European women, several countries have initiated extensive awareness and screening programs across Europe. Some governments, however, have still not implemented the planned programs because of socioeconomic or cost constraints. This challenge is likely to be dealt with quite soon with countries starting to realize the seriousness of the disease. This awareness is predicted to cause an exponential rise in demand for mammography systems.

Nearly all European countries have begun pilot studies, increasing the range of mammography systems. Many countries have been encouraged by the success of the existing screening programs in The Netherlands and Sweden. There, where the varied geographic regions make it difficult to install mammography equipment, mobile mammography units have taken off drastically. This has further added to the expansion of the mammography equipment market.

"In France, although there have been initiatives to identify breast cancer symptoms, the digital mammography market has not grown much in the public sector due to the country's persistence with film screenings and apathy towards digital imaging,” stated Srividya Badrinarayana, an industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan (Palo Alto, CA, USA; www.frost.com), a global technology growth consulting firm. "The health ministry is waiting for standard acceptable guidelines for digital mammography systems and if it adopts them, it will be the first country in Europe to do so.”

The full-field digital mammography (FFDM) field did not demonstrate very high growth as predicted by the market, but with manufacturers proving its benefits in screening programs, this field is ready to take off. The diversity of options provided by FFDM makes it much more efficient than analogue mammography systems. Features including easy data retrieval, transition to soft copy, easy assimilation to the digital workflow, and integration to picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) help both radiologists and technicians.

FFDM, apart from screening benefits, provides a lot of workflow advantages such as absence of films, online retrieval of the images, and profit of image archiving, therefore leading to greater sales. Countries including Belgium have adopted FFDM for their screening programs, additionally increasing the market for these systems. Furthermore, as FFDM technology costs as much as five times the amount of analogue systems, this market segment has excellent potential to boost the profit margins of market participants.

Some end users, however, particularly radiologists, are not comfortable with FFDM systems, because they find if hard to manage the huge amount of data generated by the technology. This leads to data mismanagement, which can be a big deterrent to the FFDM market segment.

Computer-aided detection (CAD) application has additionally increased the range of the mammography systems market. CAD is basically a set of complicated algorithms, which are of great help in improving radiologists' capacity to detect tumors in their earliest stages. One of the key factors for CAD's immense success has been its easy assimilation into the digital setting. By acting as the second reader, CAD boosts mammography systems' detection rate by nearly 25%.

"Digital CAD systems are very efficient and have more potential for growth due to the likely expansion of the FFDM segment. CAD has immense potential in Europe as many North American CAD developers have started collaborating with mammography manufacturers to package the systems with the modality,” noted Ms. Badrinarayanan.

The assimilation of CAD is not only expected to improve the overall market value of mammography systems, but can also particularly boost sales in the radiologists' end-user group.




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