Changes in breast density over time using automatic density measures. Preliminary analysis.

摘要

Breast density is an important risk factor for the development of breast cancer. The aim of this paper is to evaluate temporal breast density changes using density maps, provided by the commercial software Volpara™. The dataset is composed of 563 mammograms from 55 patients (aged between 24 and 75 years old). The time frame between two acquisitions varies from less than one year to 4 years. Pairs of mammograms are registered using the morphons registration algorithm, in order to evaluate the structural similarity of the parenchymal distribution between the two acquisitions. To provide a fair comparison, the results are divided considering the patient age during the first mammographic acquisition and the time between the two studies. To evaluate the changes in breast density, local and global measures, such as the rate of change of the volumetric breast density, the histogram intersection between two density maps and the normalized cross-correlation after the registration, are considered. The results show significant differences in the statistics, mainly focused on patients younger than 30 years old and ranged between 56 and 65 years old with respect to those in the adulthood (between 30 and 55 years old). Similarly, the time between the two mammographic acquisitions shows a significant difference for patients older than 56 years old considering one and two year of difference between the two studies.