Applying a new bilateral mammographic density segmentation method to improve accuracy of breast cancer risk prediction

Studies of parenchymal texture added to mammographic breast density and risk of breast cancer: a systematic review of the methods used in the literature

This systematic review aimed to assess the methods used to classify mammographic breast parenchymal features in relation to the prediction of future breast cancer. The databases including Medline (Ovid) 1946-, Embase.com 1947-, CINAHL Plus 1937-, Scopus 1823-, Cochrane Library (including CENTRAL), and Clinicaltrials.gov were searched through October 2021 to extract published articles in English describing the relationship of parenchymal texture features with the risk of breast cancer. Twenty-eight articles published since 2016 were included in the final review. The identification of parenchymal texture features varied from using a predefined list to machine-driven identification. A reduction in the number of features chosen for subsequent analysis in relation to cancer incidence then varied across statistical approaches and machine learning methods. The variation in approach and number of features identified for inclusion in analysis precluded generating a quantitative summary or meta-analysis of the value of these features to improve predicting risk of future breast cancers. This updated overview of the state of the art revealed research gaps; based on these, we provide recommendations for future studies using parenchymal features for mammogram images to make use of accumulating image data, and external validation of prediction models that extend to 5 and 10 years to guide clinical risk management. Following these recommendations could enhance the applicability of models, helping improve risk classification and risk prediction for women to tailor screening and prevention strategies to the level of risk.

Machine Learning: Applications and Advanced Progresses of Radiomics in Endocrine Neoplasms

Endocrine neoplasms remain a great threat to human health. It is extremely important to make a clear diagnosis and timely treatment of endocrine tumors. Machine learning includes radiomics, which has long been utilized in clinical cancer research. Radiomics refers to the extraction of valuable information by analyzing a large amount of standard data with high-throughput medical images mainly including computed tomography, positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasound. With the quantitative imaging analysis and model building, radiomics can reflect specific underlying characteristics of a disease that otherwise could not be evaluated visually. More and more promising results of radiomics in oncological practice have been seen in recent years. Radiomics may have the potential to supplement traditional imaging analysis and assist in providing precision medicine for patients. Radiomics had developed rapidly in endocrine neoplasms practice in the past decade. In this review, we would introduce the general workflow of radiomics and summarize the applications and developments of radiomics in endocrine neoplasms in recent years. The limitations of current radiomic research studies and future development directions would also be discussed.

Applying a new maximum local asymmetry feature analysis method to improve near-term breast cancer risk prediction

Quantitative assessment of mammographic asymmetry has been investigated for breast cancer risk prediction. A new asymmetry feature extraction method was proposed in this study to enhance the risk prediction accuracy of near-term breast cancer. Breast areas in each pair of bilateral mammographic images were divided into several pairs of matched local annular regions and the maximum local asymmetry features (MLAF) were extracted from these regions. Radial basis function network (RBFN) was used to merge these features for breast cancer risk prediction. The dataset included 560 negative subjects. The risk prediction performance was tested using a leave-one-case-out (LOCO) cross-validation method. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was used as the risk prediction performance evaluation index. AUC  =  0.898  ±  0.013 was obtained by using the MLAFs extracted from the annular regions, which was significantly higher than the AUC value of 0.505  ±  0.025 achieved by using global asymmetry features computed from the whole breast regions (p  <  0.05, DeLong's test) and much higher than the AUC values of 0.825  ±  0.017 and 0.717  ±  0.021 achieved by using MLAFs extracted from horizontal strip regions and vertical strip regions. The study demonstrated that near-term breast cancer risk prediction could be improved by using the proposed feature extraction method.