Abstract
Mammographic breast density is very important in the area of cancer risk evaluation, dosimetry and image quality optimization. Many studies have shown that a breast consisting of 50% glandular and 50% adipose tissues is not a representative model of typical breast composition, as the mean volumetric breast density has been found to be less than 20%, much lower than the commonly assumed value of 50/50. In this paper we investigate the characteristics of local breast density distribution of a breast in a large population. We find that the maximum local breast density, calculated from a densest region of a breast, is about 2.3X as high as the mean whole breast density. Therefore the maximum local breast density seems to match the 50/50 model better. Since modern mammography systems employ automatic exposure control (AEC) to ensure acceptable image quality for dense regions of a breast, and since the local breast density over AEC sensor regions often fall into the range of 40% and higher, the 50/50 breast model and physical phantoms should continue to be used in development of x-ray technique and clinical evaluation of mammography systems.
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Ren, B., Smith, A.P., Jing, Z. (2012). Local versus Whole Breast Volumetric Breast Density Assessments and Implications. In: Maidment, A.D.A., Bakic, P.R., Gavenonis, S. (eds) Breast Imaging. IWDM 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7361. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31271-7_100
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31271-7_100
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31270-0
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