 Hello, I am Dr. Poonam Patil working as Medical Oncologist in Manipal Hospital here in Bangalore. Asymptomatic breast cancer and early breast cancers are diagnosed only through mammography. Now mammography is basically an x-ray of the breast that should be done annually after the age of 40 years. Apart from that, there are other diagnostic imaging methods such as ultrasound of the breast and MRI of the breast that could be used to diagnose breast cancer. But in our country, very important is breast self-examination which a woman herself should do every month in first week after periods and even pregnant women should have regular breast self-examination because this is something that women often ignore. They don't give time to themselves and they don't check their breast and sometimes even if they have found a lump, they do not attend the doctor's clinic either due to ignorance or due to the fear that it may turn out to be cancer. But if it is benign lump, let the doctor check and decide and if it is benign well and good, just go for regular follow-up. But in case it is malignant, we have lost the opportunity of having it treated in an early stage where cure is slightly. So once there is a suspicious abnormality seen in the breast the next step is to take some tissue out of the lump to see what kind of tumor is it is it benign or malignant and there are two ways that it can be done. One is a fine needle aspiration cytology which is again an office-based procedure in which one needle and syringe is put into the the needle is put into the breast lump and the contents are aspirated by the syringe and examined under microscope. The second is a core biopsy. Core biopsy is also an office-based procedure where a small amount of tissue is actually taken out from the lump and sent to the laboratory for testing. Rarely when these do not give us an answer, an excision biopsy is also performed in which there is a small amount of tissue actually taken out surgically and then sent to the pathology laboratory.