Diagnostic usefulness of synthetic MMG (SMMG) with DBT (digital breast tomosynthesis) for clinical setting in breast cancer screening

Abstract

We evaluated the diagnostic performance of a novel image processing technique of synthetic MMG (SMMG) as 2D-like visualization approach with and without DBT slice images (DBT) compared with that of 2D MMG (MMG) alone. With one-view MMG and DBT, the radiation doses, utilizing the ACR phantom 156, were 1.20 mGy and 1.80 mGy. The number of the cases was 108. MMG, SMMG, and DBT slice images were evaluated independently by 4 readers utilizing ROC analysis and diagnostic performance. SMMG plus DBT demonstrated higher area under the curve (AUC) and superior diagnostic accuracy with sensitivity, specificity, and NPV compared with SMMG and MMG alone (p < 0.05). In addition, a 40% decrease of radiation dose with SMMG plus DBT compared with MMG plus DBT as the current setting will enable us to apply a two-view SMMG plus DBT in breast cancer screening instead of MMG.