title: Differences between computer-aided diagnosis of breast masses and that of calcifications.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To compare the performance of a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for diagnosis of previously detected lesions, based on radiologist-extracted findings on masses and calcifications.
  
  
  METHODS
  A feed-forward, back-propagation artificial neural network (BP-ANN) was trained in a round-robin (leave-one-out) manner to predict biopsy outcome from mammographic findings (according to the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System) and patient age. The BP-ANN was trained by using a large (>1,000 cases) heterogeneous data set containing masses and microcalcifications. The performances of the BP-ANN on masses and microcalcifications were compared with use of receiver operating characteristic analysis and a z test for uncorrelated samples.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The BP-ANN performed significantly better on masses than microcalcifications in terms of both the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and the partial receiver operating characteristic area index. A similar difference in performance was observed with a second model (linear discriminant analysis) and also with a second data set from a similar institution.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Masses and calcifications should be considered separately when evaluating CAD systems for breast cancer diagnosis.
authors: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology, Digital Imaging Research Division, Duke University Medical Center, DUMC 3302, Durham, NC 27710, USA. markey@duke.edu
authors: Mia K
authors: MK
authors: Markey
authors: Joseph Y
authors: JY
authors: Lo
authors: Carey E
authors: CE
authors: Floyd
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001706:Biopsy; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D002114:Calcinosis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008327:Mammography; D008875:Middle Aged; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D012372:ROC Curve; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity