CLASSIFICATION OF DUCTAL CARCINOMA IN-SITU BY IMAGE-ANALYSIS OF CALCIFICATIONS FROM DIGITAL MAMMOGRAMS

There is evidence to suggest that non-comedo cases of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) may have a lower risk of progressing to invasive disea se than comedo DCIS and may be managed with less radical treatment. Mo st cases of DCIS present as calcifications on the mammogram and, due t o differences in the tumour architecture, comedo calcifications often have a characteristic linear or branching appearance. In this study, c omputer methods were developed to identify the comedo cases using the imaging features of individual calcifications and of calcification clu sters. Classifier performance was measured using the area under the re ceiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and was optimized by syste matic testing of many different combinations of these features. On a t est-set of 42 cases the computer achieved a ROC curve area of 0.91 usi ng six combined cluster features. These results are encouraging given the observed overlap in appearance between the comedo and non-comedo c ases.