Computer-aided detection (CAD) has the potential to aid radiologists in detection of microcalcification clusters (MCs). CAD for digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) can be developed by using the reconstructed volume, the projection views or other derivatives as input. We have developed a novel method of generating a single planar projection (PPJ) image from a regularized DBT volume to emphasize the high contrast objects such as microcalcifications while removing the anatomical background and noise. In this work, we adapted a CAD system developed for digital mammography (CAD_DM) to the PPJ image and compared its performance with our CAD system developed for DBT volumes (CAD_DBT) in the same set of cases. For microcalcification detection in the PPJ image using the CAD_DM system, the background removal preprocessing step designed for DM was not needed. The other methods and processing steps in the CAD_DM system were kept without modification while the parameters were optimized with a training set. The linear discriminant analysis classifier using cluster based features was retrained to generate a discriminant score to be used as decision variable. For view-based FROC analysis, at 80% sensitivity, an FP rate of 1.95/volume and 1.54/image were achieved, respectively, for CAD_DBT and CAD_DM in an independent test set. At a threshold of 1.2 FPs per image or per DBT volume, the nonparametric analysis of the area under the FROC curve shows that the optimized CADDM for PPJ is significantly better than CADDBT. However, the performance of CADDM drops at higher sensitivity or FP rate, resulting in similar overall performance between the two CAD systems. The higher sensitivity of the CAD_DM in the low FP rate region and vice versa for the CAD_DBT indicate that a joint CAD system combining detection in the DBT volume and the PPJ image has the potential to increase the sensitivity and reduce the FP rate.

Date Published: 20 March 2015
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9414, Medical Imaging 2015: Computer-Aided Diagnosis, 941418 (20 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2076291

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9414:
Medical Imaging 2015: Computer-Aided Diagnosis
Lubomir M. Hadjiiski; Georgia D. Tourassi, Editor(s)