JOURNAL CLUB

Artificial Intelligence for Mammography and Digital Breast Tomosynthesis: Current Concepts and Future Perspectives 

An excerpt from the journal:

Although computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) is widely used in mammography, conventional CAD programs that use prompts to indicate potential cancers on the mammograms have not led to an improvement in diagnostic accuracy. Because of the advances in machine learning, especially with use of deep (multilayered) convolutional neural networks, artificial intelligence has undergone a transformation that has improved the quality of the predictions of the models. Recently, such deep learning algorithms have been applied to mammography and digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT). In this review, the authors explain how deep learning works in the context of mammography and DBT and define the important technical challenges...  

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Radiology: Volume 293: Number 2—November 2019 radiology.rsna.org

By Krzysztof J. Geras, PhD • Ritse M. Mann, MD, PhD • Linda Moy, MD

A New Management Technique for Symptomatic Haematomas Following Therapeutic Vacuum-Assisted Biopsy.

Benign or probably benign breast lesions are detected more and more often by women themselves as a casual finding and also upon ultrasound (US) examination due to the increase in US studies in young females and in the evaluation of lesions detected by breast cancer screening programmes. Benign breast lesions cause a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety among women, who often demand surgical excision of the lesion. The vacuum-assisted biopsy (VAB) technique is used as a cost effective alternative to surgery for excising benign breast lesions and offers diagnosis and treatment in the same intervention.....

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Evidence for avoiding the biopsy of typical fibroadenomas in women aged 25-29 years

An excerpt from the journal that we are discussing this month:

Fibroadenomas are the commonest pathological cause of breast lumps in women <30 years and the reason for many of the referrals made to the breast clinic for this age group. Women in this age group presenting with breast lumps typically undergo a clinical examination and ultrasound imaging in the first instance. Mammography is not routinely performed because of the radiation dose and decreased sensitivity due to the dense breast tissue in young women.....

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By Kathy Taylor et al FA paper

Breast Density, Why all the Fuss...?

The adult female breast is composed of variable proportions of adipose tissue and fibroglandular parenchyma.

At mammography, fibroglandular parenchyma, being denser than adipose tissue, attenuates X-rays more and appears

whiter; hence the term breast density or mammographic density, MD (Fig 1)

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