Quantification of breast arterial calcification using full field digital mammography

Abstract

Breast arterial calcification is commonly detected on some mammograms. Previous studies indicate that breast arterial calcification is evidence of general atherosclerotic vascular disease and it may be a useful marker of coronary artery disease. It can potentially be a useful tool for assessment of coronary artery disease in women since mammography is widely used as a screening tool for early detection of breast cancer. However, there are currently no available techniques for quantification of calcium mass using mammography. The purpose of this study was to determine whether it is possible to quantify breast arterial calcium mass using standard digital mammography. An anthropomorphic breast phantom along with a vessel calcification phantom was imaged using a full field digital mammography system. Densitometry was used to quantify calcium mass. A calcium calibration measurement was performed at each phantom thickness and beam energy. The known (K) and measured (M) calcium mass on 5 and 9 cm thickness phantoms were related by M=0.964K -0.288 mg (r=0.997 and SEE=0.878 mg) and M=1.004K+0.324 mg (r=0.994 and SEE = 1.32 mg), respectively. The results indicate that accurate calcium mass measurements can be made without correction for scatter glare as long as careful calcium calibration is made for each breast thickness. The results also indicate that composition variations and differences of approximately 1 cm between calibration phantom and breast thickness introduce only minimal error in calcium measurement. The uncertainty in magnification is expected to cause up to 5% and 15% error in calcium mass for 5 and 9 cm breast thicknesses, respectively. In conclusion, a densitometry technique for quantification of breast arterial calcium mass was validated using standard full field digital mammography. The results demonstrated the feasibility and potential utility of the densitometry technique for accurate quantification of breast arterial calcium mass using standard digital mammography.

Quantitative contrast‐enhanced spectral mammography based on photon‐counting detectors: A feasibility study

“…In general, the same idea can be applied to quantification of other high contrast signals, such as arterial calcification. 73, 74 Studies have suggested that the presence of breast arterial calcifications on mammograms indicates a significantly increased risk of developing coronary heart disease or a stroke. 75 A quantitative measure of breast arterial calcifications through spectral mammography may be viewed as a marker for the development coronary heart disease.…”

Detecting Cardiovascular Disease from Mammograms With Deep Learning

“…It is used clinically by radiologists for assessing the risk of coronary artery disease. The calcium mass quantification is performed by considering the BAC regions, and estimating and subtracting their surrounding local anatomical background using a linear interpolation algorithm [12]. …”

“…In spite of the advantages mentioned above, in most (if not all) clinical studies to date [4, 12, 11], BACs in mammograms were manually detected by radiologists. Such manual process is necessary in the early stages of technology development, but it is time-consuming, subjective, and tedious, thus hampering large-scale clinical testing and deployment of this new screening approach.…”

“…In this study, we investigate the feasibility of automated and accurate BAC detection on mammograms by deep learning methods in support of the long-term goal of developing an automated BAC detector which can be used to provide risk markers for coronary artery disease [3, 4, 12]. We formulate the problem as a pixel-wise, patch-based two-class classification problem.…”

Reproducibility of Breast Arterial Calcium Mass Quantification Using Digital Mammography

“…The currently available full field digital mammography systems provide the capability to quantify BAC. We have recently developed a technique for quantification of BAC using standard full field digital mammography and performed an anthropomorphic breast phantom study that demonstrates the feasibility of quantifying vascular calcium mass using densitometry after taking into account the effects of scatter correction, breast thickness, breast density, anatomic background and magnification error on calcium mass (11). …”