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Keywords:
Quality assurance, Computer Applications-General, Mammography, Breast
Authors:
L. Han Na, Y.-M. Sohn; Seoul/KR
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2014/C-1957
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] Second,
mammographic parenchymal patterns are associated with risk of breast cancer and previous studies showed direct association between increased mammographic density and increased risk of developing breast cancer[3,
5-7].
Various methods have been proposed to measure mammographic breast density.
Previous breast density assessments performed by using the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) was completely qualitative description.
The BI-RADS density category was an area-based visual assessment by a radiologist and divided into 4 categories,
indicating breast tissue is less than 25% glandular (category 1),
approximately 25-50% glandular (category 2),
approximately 50-75% glandular (category 3),
and more than 75% glandular (category 4),
respectively.The fourth edition BI-RADS involved combined qualitative and quantitative assessments by visual assessment[8].
As quantitative mammographic assessment was regarded as important methods,
there have been several methods to measure Quantitative mammographic density.
The original method,
by Wolfe at al[9]in 1987,
manually traced dense white areas on mammograms was time-consuming.
More recent computerized programs have been developed as fully automated method as well as semiautomated programs[3,
4]
However,
there are a few reports that showed the correlation of the breast density between radiologists and fully automated volumetric measurements.
Therefore,
the purpose of this study was to compare the automated volumetric breast density measurement with BI-RADS breast density assessed by radiologists’ visual estimates and analyze the clinico-radiologic factors that affect the disagreement between the automated volumetric breast density measurement and BI-RADS breast density assessed by radiologist.