Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) has a diagnostic accuracy comparable to digital mammography for women referred for breast imaging, a study published January 10 in Cancer Treatment and Research Communications found.
A team led by Naomi Noguchi, PhD, from the University of Sydney in Australia also found that DBT had a lower biopsy rate than mammography and could be more accurate in examining dense breasts.
“We found no difference in the diagnostic performance for the overall sample between the two imaging modalities with similar area under the receiver operating characteristic [AUROC] and diagnostic yield,” the Noguchi team wrote.
Researchers continue to explore the potential advantages of DBT in breast cancer screening and diagnostic imaging over standard digital mammography. The researchers pointed out a lack of data on DBT’s use in symptomatic women referred for breast imaging or in women who have a personal history or family history of breast cancer.
They also highlighted DBT’s potential in detecting abnormalities in dense breasts that may be hidden from conventional mammography.
Noguchi and colleagues added to the literature, comparing DBT’s performance to that of digital mammography in women clinically referred for breast imaging.
The retrospective study included data collected from 10,742 total exams from the two modalities. Of these, 4,687 were DBT exams while 6,055 were mammography exams.
The team’s institution transitioned to DBT in 2016, so the researchers used DBT data from that year while using mammography data from 2011.
The researchers found that cancer rates and AUROC did not significantly differ between DBT and mammography. And while DBT led to a slightly higher abnormal interpretation rate, it also yielded a lower biopsy rate.
| Performance of DBT, digital mammography in imaging clinically referred women | ||
|---|---|---|
| Measure | Mammography | DBT |
| Cancer rate | 1.71% | 1.72% |
| AUC-ROC | 0.91 | 0.91 |
| Abnormal interpretation rate | 2.17% | 2.83% |
| Biopsy rate | 9.9% | 8.2% |
While the performance of both modalities dipped in women with dense breasts, mammography experienced a bigger drop in AUROC to 0.85 compared to 0.90 for DBT. The team also reported that DBT’s sensitivity when examining dense breasts was 78.2% while mammography’s was 64.8%.
Finally, supplemental ultrasound yielded the same accuracy whether it was used with DBT (AUROC, 0.95) or mammography (AUROC, 0.95).
The study authors wrote that their findings highlight the need for robust evidence applicable to women who are clinically referred to breast imaging.
The full study can be found here.