Identifying breast cancer when it is at its formative stages, i.e. as soon as it can be detected, saves lives.  Thus, any National Breast Cancer Screening Programme is a form of investigation.  Trained radiologists inspect the X-ray image of millions of women searching for the minute and variable evidence that is produced by any of the two hundred known types of breast cancer.  About 1.5M women accept invitations to screening in England alone but only about 4 out of 1000 women are recalled for further mammography exams and tests.  Women accept the invitation to be screened to obtain peace of mind - they 'buy' the knowledge that they are free from this disease.  Improvements to the screening programme are on going.  For example,  Computer Assisted Mammography aims to use computers to automatically investigate the mammograms to better educate radiologists about the mammographic appearance of the disease, and to help them with the investigation.  QinetiQ has engaged in a collaboration with Professor Laszlo Tabar in central Sweden where the Breast Screening Programme was born, and where women as young as 40 are invited every year for screening.  The first achievement of this project used computer technology to automatically categorise the normal parenchyma, the mammographic appearance of the breast, into a number of computer generated categories or taxonomy.  The system learned to do this from a great number of Swedish mammograms digitised to the highest available resolution.   Understanding the variability of the female breast through this taxonomy sets the scene for improvements in breast cancer detection by computer.  It improves it because one can develop specific detectors for specific categories of breast type within the taxonomy.  FOR FURTHER DESCRIPTION SEE UNDER 'DEVELOPMENT PLANS'