Cancer Missed on Mammography

Abstract

Observer error in reading screening mammograms has been identified as a significant factor in delayed diagnosis of breast cancer, with up to 30% of potentially detectable cancers being overlooked. Computer-aided detection (CADe) has been developed to aid radiologists in the detection task, and pre-clinical studies have shown that CADe applied to digitized mammography films can flag about 50% of radiologists' observational oversights. The purpose of this investigation is to test how many additional cancers are detected by radiologists using CADe, in an observer study using an enriched mixture of cancers. Based on an initial pilot study, we estimate that we need 360 cases containing 60 cancers with 10 radiologists. The CADe system used in this study has a sensitivity of 53% with 0.48 false positives per image for the cases used in this study. To date five radiologists have completed the study. All were experienced radiologists spending 100% of their clinical time on breast imaging. For these readers, we did not measure a statistically significant increase in performance when using CADe. Several less experienced radiologists are now enrolled in the study. We will be able to examine the effect of CADe as a function of reader experience.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADA433868

Entities

People

  • Robert Nishikawa

Organizations

  • University of Chicago

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Breast Cancer
  • Carcinoma
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer-Aided Diagnosis
  • Computers
  • Data Analysis
  • Detection
  • Diagnostic Imaging
  • Health Services
  • Mass
  • Medical Personnel
  • Neoplasms
  • North America
  • Observers
  • Personnel Management
  • Physicians
  • Pilot Studies

Fields of Study

  • Medicine
  • Physics

Readers

  • Oncology and Biomarker-Based Cancer Detection.