- Poster presentation
- Open Access
- Published:
Comparison of dedicated digital specimen radiography with direct digital specimen mammography images
Breast Cancer Research volume 13, Article number: P26 (2011)
Introduction
The objective was to compare the image quality obtained from a dedicated specimen modality with the image quality from a standard direct digital mammography unit.
Methods
All wide local excision (WLE), vacuum-assisted 10G core biopsy and 14G core biopsy samples were imaged with a Hologic Dimensions mammography unit and a Bioptics Biovision digital specimen radiography system. WLE specimens were imaged without magnification on both systems. Biopsy specimens were imaged with magnification. Two readers assessed each set of images. The number of microcalcifications was recorded and visibility of each lesion was assessed on a four-point scale.
Results
The total number of specimens was 97. Of these specimens, 67 contained microcalcification, 23 masses, four distortions and three masses with calcification. In 44/67 specimens, the Biovision system demonstrated >20 microcalcifications as opposed to only 24/67 with the Hologic system; this is shown to be significant with P = 0.001. In two of the specimens no calcification was demonstrated on the Hologic system, whereas the Biovision system demonstrated <5 in these cases. A significant difference was also shown in the conspicuity of the lesions between the two systems, with the lesions having greater conspicuity on the Biovision system (P = 0.027).
Conclusion
Significantly more microcalcification is demonstrated by the Biovision system and conspicuity is significantly better. This provides increased confidence that a representative sample has been obtained at biopsy, and therefore increased diagnostic confidence.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
About this article
Cite this article
Morel, J., Milnes, V., Iqbal, A. et al. Comparison of dedicated digital specimen radiography with direct digital specimen mammography images. Breast Cancer Res 13 (Suppl 1), P26 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/bcr2978
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/bcr2978
Keywords
- Image Quality
- Core Biopsy
- Digital Mammography
- Wide Local Excision
- Diagnostic Confidence