Breast density analysis in 3-D whole breast ultrasound images

The breast density information is one of important factors for estimating the risk in breast cancer detection and early prevention. In this paper, we present two methods, including threshold-based and proportion-based, to automatically analyze the breast density using whole breast ultrasound. The two algorithms are experimented with 32 cases which are scanned from 32 patients using the US machine SSD-5500 with a recent developed scanner ASU-1004 (Aloka, Japan). The experimental results are graded from 4 (extremely dense tissue) to 1 (almost entirely fat), and respectively compared with the majority grades of three radiologists. The accuracy of the threshold-based and proportion-based strategies is 88% and 84% respectively.