Mammograms could conceivably save more lives with a technology being developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Chicago.

The proposed system would allow doctors to quickly identify trends specific to an individual patient and also match images and text to a database of known cancerous and pre-cancerous conditions.

"Our goal is to develop a decision and support system that helps doctors and patients," said Robert Patton of ORNL's Computational Sciences and Engineering Division. "There is a wealth of existing information that doctors could be using but with time and resource constraints it is virtually impossible."

So far, researchers have studied 60,000 mammograms of 12,000 patients. This project, which makes use of the lab's ultra-scale computing, is funded through ORNL's Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.