Towards a quantitative measure of radiographic masking by dense tissue in mammography

Abstract

The detection sensitivity of screening mammography is reduced for dense breasts where the appearance of fibroglandular tissue can mask suspicious lesions. A measure of the degree of masking expected for a mammogram could be useful for informing the decision to direct some women to supplemental imaging procedures not affected by density. Here, we present an adaptation of a model observer to estimate the detection task SNR, dlocal, of a lesion embedded in various portions of the breast to indicate the level of detection difficulty. Rank correlation of mean mammogram dlocal with density category is ρ=-0.58. Correlation of fractional area of mammograms with low dlocal<2 versus density category is ρ=0.61. This suggests that a metric based on dlocal may be useful in quantifying masking effects of breast density. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.