Synthesizing mammogram from digital breast tomosynthesis

Abstract

Our purpose is to develop a new method for generating synthesized mammogram (SM) from digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) and to assess its potential as an adjunct to DBT. We first applied multiscale bilateral filtering to the reconstructed DBT slices to enhance the high-frequency features and reduce noise. A maximum intensity projection (MIP) image was then obtained from the high-frequency components of the DBT slices. A multiscale image fusion method was designed to combine the MIP image and the central DBT projection view into an SM and further enhance the high-frequency features. We conducted a pilot reader study to visually assess the image quality of SM in comparison to full field digital mammograms (FFDM). For each DBT craniocaudal or mediolateral view, a clinical FFDM of the corresponding view was retrospectively collected. Three MQSA radiologists, blinded to the pathological and other clinical information, independently interpreted the SM and the corresponding FFDM side by side marked with the lesion locations. The differences in the BI-RADS assessments of both MCs and masses between SM and FFDM did not achieve statistical significance for all 3 readers. The conspicuity of MCs on SM was superior to that on FFDM and the BI-RADS assessments of MCs were comparable while the conspicuity of masses on SM was degraded and interpretation on SM was less accurate than that on FFDM. The SM may be useful for efficient prescreening of MCs in DBT but the DBT should be used for detection and characterization of masses.

Feature fusion Siamese network for breast cancer detection comparing current and prior mammograms

“…45 To increase the number of pretraining images and to have a balanced number of cancer and normal cases for training the backbone models, we generated synthetic 2D mammogram (s2D) using the BCS-DBT 3D mammograms. We employed the combination of Hologic c-view and reproject 2D mammogram algorithms 46,47 to generate s2D mammograms (the s2D algorithm is described in the Supporting Information). Based on the design of our study, we leveraged normal and cancer cases from BCS-DBT.…”

Quantitative assessment of image quality in digital breast tomosynthesis

“…However, even if eventually the dose ratio of a tomosynthesis view and a mammographic view becomes 1, the radiation dose of the examination will be doubled, since current protocols include both mammographic and tomosynthesis views. A possible solution to the increased dose level would be the replacement of the standard 2D mammogram by the synthetic 2D mammogram [29,[14][15][16].…”

“…Particularly, DBT has shown to increase detection of low contrast lesions (masses surrounded by dense parenchyma) [8] while its contribution in the detection of microcalcification (MC) clusters is controversial [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]. In an attempt, to reduce the increased patient dose of the combined use of DBT with 2D, the synthetic 2D (s2D) mammographic image produced from DBT data has been proposed [14], [15], [16], eventually aiming to substitute 2D acquisition in clinical screening.…”

“…Intercomparison of the three mammography modes has been reported in observer performance studies using clinical data, in order to confirm the contribution of DBT and s2D in MC cluster detection [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]. Yet, the lack of lesion ground truth in clinical studies makes intercomparison of mammographic modes via quantitative image quality analysis a difficult task.…”

“…In tomosynthesis AGD is also used to evaluate the radiation dose with the addition to its calculation of the angular dependence. Even if tomosynthesis uses low dose projections the increased number of them (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25) leads to an increase in dose compared to standard mammography. The radiation dose of a tomosynthesis view can range between equal and twice the radiation dose of a standard mammographic view, depending on the technical characteristics of the system.…”