Controversy surrounds mammograms as a major screening tool for breast cancer, including the fact that besides being uncomfortable, they can often detect lumps but can't determine which ones are cancerous. As a result, women often undergo additional, often unnecessary, treatments such as biopsies. Even biopsies aren't infallible, however, and women can be subjected to needless mastectomies, radiation, and chemotherapy.

Mammograms, which are X-rays of the breast, may one day be a thing of the past thanks to research by University of Michigan scientists who are developing a pill that contains a fluorescent dye which attaches to cancerous tissue and fluoresces under a near infra-red light.

"There's a lot of controversy right now about when patients should start screening for breast cancer," says Greg Thurber, Ph.D. "Screening can potentially catch the disease early in some patients, but false positives can lead to unnecessary, aggressive treatments in patients who don't need them. We don't know how to select the right patients to treat. Our work could help change that."

The technique was effective in animal testing, and the researchers are developing a pill to be used in human patients. The fact that the dye is already used in Europe for other clinical applications could help speed the approval process in the U.S.

Although at this wavelength, fluorescent tumors can only be detected 1 to 2 centimeters deep, Thurber says given the elasticity of breast tissue, pairing his technique with ultrasound in the same instrument should be able to detect most cancers.

Thurber says the technique should also be effective with dense breast tissue whose mammograms are difficult to read. Additionally, he is designing the agent to specifically seek out aggressive tumors, an approach that could distinguish them from slow-growing cancers such as ductal carcinoma in situ, a noninvasive breast cancer.

According to breastcancer.org, out of 1,297,906 women who had screening mammograms, there were 159,448 false-positive results. Women aged 40 to 49 had the largest percentage of false-positive mammograms — 33 percent.