Local breast density assessment using reacquired mammographic images

Area of Science:

• Radiology and Medical Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering
• Quantitative Imaging

Background:

• Accurate assessment of glandular tissue distribution in mammography is essential for breast cancer screening and risk evaluation.
• Quantitative imaging techniques offer objective measures of breast composition, complementing traditional density assessments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the spatial glandular volumetric tissue distribution and density measures provided by Volpara™ Density Maps.
• To assess the reliability of Volpara™ Density Maps using repeated mammogram pairs with slight variations in acquisition parameters.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of 99 pairs of full-field digital mammograms.
• Utilized Volpara™ Density Maps software to estimate global and local glandular tissue distribution.
• Employed histogram similarity metrics and difference image statistics to evaluate local glandular information.

Main Results:

• High correlations observed for global measures: breast volume (R=0.99), glandular tissue volume (R=0.94), and volumetric breast density (R=0.96).
• Histogram similarity metrics indicated high information sharing between repeated images.
• Small changes in acquisition angle did not significantly alter the glandular pattern, but breast thickness variations did.

Conclusions:

• Volpara™ Density Maps demonstrates reliability in estimating local glandular tissue distribution for assessment and follow-up.
• The software is robust to minor variations in acquisition angle and beam energy.
• Divergences in results can occur due to differing breast compression conditions.