Measurement challenge: protocol for international case-control comparison of mammographic measures that predict breast cancer risk.

Introduction: For women of the same age and body mass index, increased mammographic density is one of the strongest predictors of breast cancer risk. There are multiple methods of measuring mammographic density and other features in a mammogram that could potentially be used in a screening setting to identify and target women at high risk of developing breast cancer. However, it is unclear which measurement method provides the strongest predictor of breast cancer risk.

Predicting interval and screen-detected breast cancers from mammographic density defined by different brightness thresholds.

Background: Case-control studies show that mammographic density is a better risk factor when defined at higher than conventional pixel-brightness thresholds. We asked if this applied to interval and/or screen-detected cancers.

Method: We conducted a nested case-control study within the prospective Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study including 168 women with interval and 422 with screen-detected breast cancers, and 498 and 1197 matched controls, respectively.