The diagnostic accuracy of dual-view digital mammography, single-view breast tomosynthesis and a dual-view combination of breast tomosynthesis and digital mammography in a free-response observer performance study

The purpose of the present study was to compare the diagnostic accuracy of dual-view digital mammography (DM), single-view breast tomosynthesis (BT) and BT combined with the opposite DM view. Patients with subtle lesions were selected to undergo BT examinations. Two radiologists who are non-participants in the study and have experience in using DM and BT determined the locations and extents of lesions in the images. Five expert mammographers interpreted the cases using the free-response paradigm. The task was to mark and rate clinically reportable findings suspicious for malignancy and clinically relevant benign findings. The marks were scored with reference to the outlined regions into lesion localization or non-lesion localization, and analysed by the jackknife alternative free-response receiver operating characteristic method. The analysis yielded statistically significant differences between the combined modality and dual-view DM (p < 0.05). No differences were found between single-view BT and dual-view DM or between single-view BT and the combined modality

The characteristics of malignant breast tumors imaged using a prototype mechanical imaging system as an adjunct to mammography

Breast cancer is diagnosed by a combination of modalities. Measuring the elasto-mechanical properties of suspicious lesions, by e.g. ultrasound elastography, can help differentiate malignant from benign findings. Using a prototype Mechanical Imaging (MI) system as an adjunct to mammography, the aim of this study was to characterize tumors using MI and compare the readings to those from the contralateral breast. Thirteen bilateral MI sets from women with malignant breast lesions were included in this study, drawn from a larger set of 155 women recalled from screening. The results showed that mean lesion pressure was significantly greater than the mean pressure of the corresponding breast, 7.5 ± 7.0 kPa compared to 2.5 ± 1.6 kPa (P = 0.01). There was no evidence for a difference in mean pressure or standard deviation of the MI image between symptomatic and contralateral asymptomatic breasts (P = 0.24 and 0.68). The results support that it is possible to use MI to distinguish malignant cancers from normal breast tissue. Still, further investigations of the characteristics of benign lesions are necessary to ascertain the usefulness of the system