Clinical performance progress of BREAST participants: the impact of test-set participation

To investigate if positive changes in the clinical performance of radiologists are associated with reading mammographic test sets.

This study investigated the clinical audit history for a cohort of 39 participants in the BreastScreen Reader Assessment Strategy who have read for BreastScreen New South Wales in the period between 2010 and 2018, inclusively. Based on the year in which each radiologist completed his or her first test set, data of multiple clinical audit metrics from two calendar years before test-set reading were compared against similar data from three different periods after test-set completion. The same process was repeated after dividing radiologists into two subgroups based on their median screen-reading volume (3,688), to test if experience is a determinant of post-test set performance.

On average, radiologists showed significant improvements (p<0.05) in the recall rate for subsequent screening rounds, in positive predictive value 1 (PPV1), and in specificity. When dividing radiologists based on their average annual reading volume, radiologists with higher reading numbers demonstrated similar significant improvements in the recall rate and in PPV1. In addition, they showed significant improvements in the detection rates of invasive breast cancer and ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). In contrast, the radiologists with lower reading volume indicated significant changes in the recall rate and in PPV1, both accruing in one of the three compared periods.

Mammographic test-set participants improve over time in identifying normal breast screens and detecting breast cancer in association with reading higher volumes of breast screening cases.