Keywords:
Performed at one institution, Experimental, Not applicable, Cancer, Observer performance, Mammography, Digital radiography, Breast
Authors:
D. S. Al-Mousa1, M. Alakhras2; 1Irbid/JO, 2Ar Ramtha/JO
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2020/C-03377
Purpose
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among females worldwide [1]. In Jordan, breast cancer accounted for 37.3 % of the cancers in females and ranked the first in all years from 1996-2012 [2-4]. Mammography is the screening modality for early detection of breast cancer. 'Mammographic density’ is a term used to describe the portion of the breast that comprises fibroglandular tissue on mammograms [5]. The high mammographic density is a significant predictor of breast cancer risk and is associated with four- to six-times increased risk in women with dense mammograms [6]. Breast tumours, have similar attenuation properties to fibroglandular tissue therefore detection of lesions can be made more difficult with increasing mammographic density where subtle breast lesions can be obscured resulting in sensitivity decreasing from 80-98% in low mammographic density breasts to 30 -75% in mammographically dense breasts [7-12]. There is evidence that high mammographic density is associated with lower specificity [10, 13], higher rates of interval cancers [14], higher recall rates [15] and more large screen-detected tumours[16].
In the digital era, post-processing techniques are made available to overcome the masking effect of high mammographic density on subtle lesions. Mousa et. al. [17], showed that radiologists behaviour might change while diagnosing high density mammograms which would improve their performance. Hence, digital technology may lead to high overall sensitivity of any screening program [18].
The purpose of this study was to investigate radiologists’ performance using full field digital mammography (FFDM) acquisition in Jordan and to examine whether radiologist experience have an effect on cancer detection in high mammographic density mammograms.