A study of the feasibility of using slabbing to reduce tomosynthesis review time

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate whether decreasing the amount of slices in breast tomosynthesis (BT) image volumes reduce reading time. BT slices were combined into so-called slabs, by reconstructing thin slices and merging them into thicker slabs. Sets of slabs where created from 35 clinical BT volumes with malignant or benignant findings and from 50 BT volumes drawn from screening sets (without any prior review). The image sets were reviewed in two separate sessions while the review time was recorded. A total of five experienced radiologists were employed for the image review.Additionally a VGA study was performed to compare slabbed images with the originals in order to ensure that the image quality was not significantly degraded. One set of 27 pathological cases (13 masses and 14 microcalcification clusters) and one of 22 subtle lesions that had been missed on digital mammography but detected on BT were presented to an experienced radiologist and 2 medical physicists who rated the quality of the slabbed versions relative to the originals.The study could find no significant degradation in image quality when using 2 mm slabs instead of 1 mm slices. There was no significant decrease in reading time on clinical cases (P = .133), but on screening images there was a significant decrease of 7.7 ± 9.6 s from an average level of 32.2 ± 14.5 s (P < .0001). This suggests that increasing slab thickness can reduce the time radiologists spend studying normal images by 20%.

Performance of one-view breast tomosynthesis as a stand-alone breast cancer screening modality: results from the Malmö Breast Tomosynthesis Screening Trial, a population-based study

“…We did not register the reading time in our study, since the reading and scoring procedures were specific to the trial and would not reflect the true time consumption in a normal screening workflow. In a previous study from our group, we found that the reading time for one-view DBT (MLO) was roughly 30 s (in an enriched population of clinical and screening cases) [ 27 ]. This is about one third of the reported reading time for the so-called combination mode — two-view DBT in combination with two-view DM — used in the Oslo Tomosynthesis Screening Trial [ 12 ].…”

Personalized breast cancer screening with selective addition of digital breast tomosynthesis through artificial intelligence

“… – 7 To the best of our knowledge, no study of reading time for one-view DBT compared with two-view DM is available. However, two studies reported reading times of one sided one-view wide-angle DBT 8 , 9 . These times were similar to the DBT reading times in some of the studies comparing one-sided two-view DBT with DM, 6 , 7 but shorter than some of the studies 4 , 5 .…”

Evaluation of the possibility to use thick slabs of reconstructed outer breast tomosynthesis slice images

“…That depends on if radiologists spend an equal amount of time on all slice images, or routinely go through the outer parts of the image volume faster. However, earlier studies suggest that increased slab thickness reduces the reading time [7] . Furthermore, during the image evaluation in this work, there was a wait for the standard image volumes (2 mm slab thickness) to upload to the workstation, while the smaller image volumes (6 mm and 10 mm slab thickness) was uploaded almost instantaneous.…”

“…This can be done by combining adjacent image planes into thicker slice images, so called slabbing [7,8] . Since thicker slabbing decreases the depth resolution, and thereby increases tissue overlap, it could affect the detection of lesions [9,10] .…”

“…A possible way to decrease the amount of data and shorten the reading time in BT is to reduce the number of slice images in the reconstructed image volume [7] . This can be done by combining adjacent image planes into thicker slice images, so called slabbing [7,8] .…”