Addition of Contrast-enhanced Mammography to Tomosynthesis for Breast Cancer Detection in Women with a Personal History of Breast Cancer: Prospective TOCEM Trial Interim Analysis.

Background Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is often inadequate for screening women with a personal history of breast cancer (PHBC). The ongoing prospective Tomosynthesis or Contrast-Enhanced Mammography, or TOCEM, trial includes three annual screenings with both DBT and contrast-enhanced mammography (CEM). Purpose To perform interim assessment of cancer yield, stage, and recall rate when CEM is added to DBT in women with PHBC.

Impact of and interaction between the availability of prior examinations and DBT on the interpretation of negative and benign mammograms.

Rationale And Objectives: To assess the interaction between the availability of prior examinations and digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) in decisions to recall a woman during interpretation of mammograms.

Materials And Methods: Eight radiologists independently interpreted twice 36 mammography examinations, each of which had current and prior full-field digital mammography images (FFDM) and DBT under a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant, institutional review board-approved protocol (written consent waived). During the first reading, three sequential ratings were provided using FFDM only, followed by FFDM + DBT, and then followed by FFDM + DBT + priors.

Time to diagnosis and performance levels during repeat interpretations of digital breast tomosynthesis: preliminary observations.

Rationale And Objectives: To compare time to interpretation and diagnostic performance levels during repeat readings of full-field digital mammography (FFDM) and digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) in a retrospective study.

Materials And Methods: Three experienced radiologists twice interpreted 125 selected examinations, 35 with verified cancers and 90 negative for cancer during a period of 22 months using FFDM alone followed by a combined FFDM + DBT mode. Changes in time to "review and rate" these examinations as well as in diagnostic performance levels where assessed.

Agreement of the order of overall performance levels under different reading paradigms.

Rationale And Objectives: To investigate consistency of the orders of performance levels when interpreting mammograms under three different reading paradigms.

Materials And Methods: We performed a retrospective observer study in which nine experienced radiologists rated an enriched set of mammography examinations that they personally had read in the clinic ("individualized") mixed with a set that none of them had read in the clinic ("common set"). Examinations were interpreted under three different reading paradigms: binary using screening Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS), receiver-operating characteristic (ROC), and free-response ROC (FROC).

Binary and multi-category ratings in a laboratory observer performance study: a comparison.

The authors investigated radiologists, performances during retrospective interpretation of screening mammograms when using a binary decision whether to recall a woman for additional procedures or not and compared it with their receiver operating characteristic (ROC) type performance curves using a semi-continuous rating scale. Under an Institutional Review Board approved protocol nine experienced radiologists independently rated an enriched set of 155 examinations that they had not personally read in the clinic, mixed with other enriched sets of examinations that they had individually read in the clinic, using both a screening BI-RADS rating scale (recall/not recall) and a semi-continuous ROC type rating scale (0 to 100). The vertical distance, namely the difference in sensitivity levels at the same specificity levels, between the empirical ROC curve and the binary operating point were computed for each reader.

The "laboratory" effect: comparing radiologists' performance and variability during prospective clinical and laboratory mammography interpretations.

Purpose: To compare radiologists' performance during interpretation of screening mammograms in the clinic with their performance when reading the same mammograms in a retrospective laboratory study.

Materials And Methods: This study was conducted under an institutional review board-approved, HIPAA-compliant protocol; the need for informed consent was waived. Nine experienced radiologists rated an enriched set of mammograms that they had personally read in the clinic (the "reader-specific" set) mixed with an enriched "common" set of mammograms that none of the participants had previously read in the clinic by using a screening Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) rating scale.

Screening mammography: do women prefer a higher recall rate given the possibility of earlier detection of cancer?

Purpose: To prospectively survey women undergoing screening mammography to assess their attitudes toward and preference for the level of recall rates given the possibility that an increase in recall rates may result in earlier detection of cancer.

Materials And Methods: This HIPAA-compliant survey was performed with an institutional review board-approved protocol. Women who arrived for their routine screening mammographic examination from November 2004 to March 2005 were informed before they consented to participate.

"Memory effect" in observer performance studies of mammograms.

Rationale And Objective: To evaluate breast radiologists' recognition of mammograms showing cancers that they correctly detected or "missed" during clinical interpretations.

Materials And Methods: Two similar experiments were conducted. In the first, 33 bilateral screening mammograms were reviewed by four breast imagers.

Recall and detection rates in screening mammography.

Background: The authors investigated the correlation between recall and detection rates in a group of 10 radiologists who had read a high volume of screening mammograms in an academic institution.

Methods: Practice-related and outcome-related databases of verified cases were used to compute recall rates and tumor detection rates for a group of 10 Mammography Quality Standard Act (MQSA)-certified radiologists who interpreted a total of 98,668 screening mammograms during the years 2000, 2001, and 2002. The relation between recall and detection rates for these individuals was investigated using parametric Pearson (r) and nonparametric Spearman (rho) correlation coefficients.

Performance change of mammographic CAD schemes optimized with most-recent and prior image databases.

Rationale And Objectives: The authors evaluated performance changes in the detection of masses on "current" (latest) and "prior" images by computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) schemes that had been optimized with databases of current and prior mammograms.

Materials And Methods: The authors selected 260 pairs of matched consecutive mammograms. Each current image depicted one or two verified masses.