Dear Women's Imaging Insider,
Only seven of 243 mammography radiographers had received specific training in dementia care, while 82% said they needed it. In Malta, a researcher built the first predictive model for threatened miscarriage in a country that wasn't even recording first-trimester losses before her study began. Both findings came from an ECR 2026 session.
On AI and breast screening, the MASAI results, published in January, showed AI-supported mammography cutting interval cancers and radiologist workload simultaneously. A separate Spanish trial went further: removing radiologists from low-risk reads entirely found more cancers and cut workload by 63%, but at the cost of an increase in the recall rate. Italy has already moved, issuing national guidelines on when AI decides the reading pathway. At ECR 2026, the conversation moved upstream: whether BI-RADS itself needs to evolve into something predictive rather than descriptive.
The cardiovascular signal from mammograms keeps getting stronger. Two studies now show that AI analysis of breast arterial calcifications on routine screening images can predict cardiovascular disease risk in women. No extra scan, no extra radiation -- worth watching, especially with the EU Safe Hearts Plan pushing cardiovascular prevention up the policy agenda.
Where screening still fails: an international team mapped the causes of missed breast cancers: lesion location, perceptual error, workflow. A 12-year audit put density back in focus, particularly for women under 50. The TMIST Lead-in data suggest DBT has an edge over conventional mammography in age groups the big trials weren't designed around. And on the modality side: a German team showed gadopiclenol at half-dose performs on par with standard gadolinium in breast MRI.
Beyond breast screening, MRI has now captured placental contractions in real time -- a first, with implications for obstetric surveillance. And an Italian team made the case for MRI defecography in pelvic floor dysfunction, a condition that is common, underdiagnosed, and almost never leads the conversation in women's imaging.
And the number that frames all of it: the Lancet Oncology projects 3.5 million breast cancer cases annually by 2050.
This letter features only a few of the news reports posted over the past few weeks in the Women's Imaging Community. Please scroll through the full list of our coverage here.
Claudia Tschabuschnig
Associate Editor
AuntMinnieEurope.com
