WOMEN in East Lancashire are benefitting from a new digital breast screening system and state-of-the-art trailer.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has revamped its mobile service, which was first introduced in 1993.

Mammogram screening is offered to women between the ages of 50 and 70 to check for any irregularities such as signs of cancer.

The new trailer, which contains two digital mammogram machines, will visit 11 sites and be operated by three breast screening radiographers.

Around 105 women are invited to the twin-roomed trailer each day as part of the national programme.

Dr Richard Dobrashian, the trust’s director of breast screening and a consultant radiologist, said the new technology would deliver quicker results and could help save more lives.

He said: “The old machines would take an X-ray of the breast, which would be sent back to the hospital, processed overnight then assessed and read by a radiologist, sometimes up to a week later.

“With the digital ones the image comes up on the screen at the time and the mammograms can be read later that day.

"It’s a speed issue and also because it’s done electronically you get a much better clarity of the tissue in the breast, so it’s easier to pick up cancers.

“Also if the position of the photograph or the exposure is wrong you can take another picture there and then.”

Three new machines have also been installed in the refurbished breast screening unit at Burnley General Hospital, where younger women can also go for assessment.

Dr Dobrashian said the new technology could have cost up to £3million if bought outright, but has been leased for a period of five years, after which it will be replaced with new models.

He said: “We’ve got a Picture Archive Communication System, basically an expensive computer that will display the mammograms in a high resolution format, so we can magnify them and enhance the images to increase the detection of early forms of cancer.

“What we have found is with the new mammograms we’re seeing things and recalling patients for things we probably felt couldn’t be seen with the old mammograms.

“Over the course of time if our cancer detection rate goes up then it’s a benefit of the system.”

According to Cancer Research UK’s latest figures around 48,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer each year.

In 2009 11,728 people died.