This poster is published under an
open license. Please read the
disclaimer for further details.
Type:
Educational Exhibit
Keywords:
Tissue characterisation, Computer Applications-General, Mammography, Breast
Authors:
A.-R. Grivegnee; Linkebeek/BE
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2015/C-1070
Background
The BI-RADS 5th Edition clearly states that breast composition is a volumetric assessment of dense tissue.
Several other changes were made,
including:
- Change 1 - Using letters (i.e.
a,
b,
c,
d) rather than numbers (i.e.
1,
2,
3,
4)
- Change 2 – Removal of the quantitative area-based percentage ranges
- Change 3 – Suggesting increasing the density category for “breasts containing coalescent areas of fibroglandular tissue that are sufficiently dense to obscure small masses”.
Figure 1 summarizes the 5th Edition changes to the BI-RADS mammography lexicon for breast composition compared to the previous 4th Edition.
The use of letters was recommended so as to reduce confusion with the numbered BI-RADS assessment categories (0-6).
ACR also removed the ranges of area-based percent density for each BI-RADS category,
for two reasons: 1) to place more emphasis on the masking risks indicated by the text descriptors of breast density; and 2) introduction of quartile ranges of percent density in the 4th edition did not change the distribution of women in each BI-RADS category (as assessed by U.S.
radiologists),
and so subsequent removal of these ranges was similarly not expected to results in a change in this distribution.