Aims and objectives
Introduction
Breast density in mammography depends on the relative amounts of fibroglandular and fatty tissues.Breast density in mammography is defined bythe percentage of total breast area occupied by dense fibroglandular tissue.
Several factors can affect the composition of breast tissue[1].
The change and variability of breast composition depends on hormonal fluctuations including menarche,
pregnancy,
breastfeeding,
or menopause and woman’s genetic predisposition[2].
Mammographic density is important.
First,
dense breast fibroglandular tissue may obscure mass or calcification and lower the sensitivity in mammographic detection of breast carcinoma[3,4]...
Methods and materials
Study population
This retrospective study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of our institution,
and written informed consent was obtained from all patients.
Between February 2011 to September 2012,
877 women had screening or diagnostic mammograms with fully automated volumetric breast density analysis.
The 17 Patients with a history of breast-conserving surgery,
or mastectomy with breast cancer were excluded,
and final 860 women were included in this study.
The standard craniocaudal (CC) and mediolateral oblique (MLO) views of films were obtained for each breast...
Results
Demographic characteristics
The mean age of the 860 patients was 54.7±10.2 years old (range 26-89 years).
The 760 patients had undergone mammography for screening,
the remaining 100 patients were performed mammography for diagnostic purpose.
The frequency of the breast density assessed by two radiologists and automated volumetric breast density measurement are listed in Table 1.
The most frequently observed breast density was category 3 in both radiologists and Volpara (Table 2).
The interobserver agreement for the evaluation of breast density by BI-RADS category were good...
Conclusion
The automated volumetric breast density measurement shows good agreement with radiologists’ visual assessment of BI-RADS density category as a quantitative method.
The difference in bilateral breast density affect disagreement between radiologist and automated software.
References
1.Boyd NF,
Lockwood GA,
Martin LJ,
et al.
Mammographic densities and breast cancer risk.
Breast Dis 1998; 10:113-126
2.Garcia-Manso A,
Garcia-Orellana CJ,
Gonzalez-Velasco HM,
Gallardo-Caballero R,
Macias-Macias M.
Study of the effect of breast tissue density on detection of masses in mammograms.
Comput Math Methods Med 2013; 2013:213794
3.Martin KE,
Helvie MA,
Zhou C,
et al.
Mammographic density measured with quantitative computer-aided method: comparison with radiologists' estimates and BI-RADS categories.
Radiology 2006; 240:656-665
4.Seo JM,
Ko ES,
Han BK,
Ko EY,
Shin JH,
Hahn SY....