It doesn't take a medical degree to see there's something wrong with this picture.

"This is an obvious breast cancer that someone can feel," said Dr. Donald Van de Water

Find out more about Donald Van de Water, M.D.

Those are some of the easy cancers to diagnose. The ones that have gone on for so long, the woman now has a real fight on her hands.

"This woman had a mammogram a year ago and there was a small question glaring there that we might have found this at an earlier time," said Dr. Van de Water.

This is more like it.

"What we're looking for is subtle changes," said Dr. Van de Water.

In some cases, a tiny speck that raises suspicion, early enough to make a difference.

"At that time it was questioned, the patient would have been asked to return for an ultrasound," said Dr. Van de Water.

That's why Dr. Donald Van de Water and the medical community are strong believers in mammograms and that's not all.

"Finding breast cancer early depends on a combination of breast self-exam programs by the woman, a breast examination by a physician and a routine check-up for physical exams and a combination of those too with mammography," Van de Water.

Linda Muell follows that advice. She had a scare in her thirties. A routine mammogram turned up a solid mass that had to be surgically removed.

"I wouldn't have found that lump. It had ended up being benign but it just really made me a believer that it was so important that I do get annual mammograms," said Muell.

The numbers show that one out of every nine women in the United States will develop breast cancer at some point. But with early detection, doctors can track down a small tumor before it becomes a big problem.