LONDON -- A new scanning technique could take some of the guesswork out of reading mammograms and may spare women from further tests to detect cancer.

Breast lumps show up on mammograms as dark shadows but it can be difficult to determine whether they are harmless or cancerous so a biopsy, a sample of cells or tissue removed to check for signs of the disease, is done.

But a New Jersey based company, Dobi Medical Systems, has developed a scanner that can help to determine which breast lumps are cancerous without the need for a biopsy.

"The scanner looks for the network of blood vessels feeding tumors with oxygen and nutrients. A fast-growing tumor usually has a dense network of capillaries," ****New Scientist****8 magazine said on Wednesday.

A cancerous region shows up as a dark blob and can be matched up with the suspicious area in the mammogram.

"Preliminary tests comparing Dobi scans with conventional methods in 200 women suggest the scans could cut the number of false alarms by as much as 70 percent," according to New Scientist.

The scanning technique could be particularly useful in younger women who have denser breast tissue which makes detecting a tumor with a mammogram more difficult.

"There is also some hope that the Dobi scans can provide an early warning of cancer, revealing speck-size tumors too small to show up on mammograms. This will be put to the test when clinical trials begin later this year," the magazine added. (Reuters)