Mammography image analysis software start-up YourScan.org is requesting that women with breast cancer donate their mammograms to help test its automatic breast visual recognition software for differentiating benign lesions from malignant ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and tumors.
In a pilot study conducted over the past three years, the firm's Lesion Tissue Profiling (LTP) software showed it was capable of accurately detecting the shapes of malignant DCIS and tumors that were otherwise not visible to the human eye, according to YourScan.org. The study also showed that these lesions have a limited number of basic shapes that can be rendered as distinct tissue profiles common to all malignancy, implying that these profiles may be used as a tool in routine screening of all mammography studies, the firm said.
The crowdsourcing campaign is asking women with breast cancer to provide their entire series of mammograms to compare earlier studies with later exams that resulted in definitive diagnoses. These cases will be added to YourScan.org's proprietary database for storing mammographic images in a format that will support the comparison of billions of tissue profiles for breast cancer precursors and lesions, the company said.
By cataloging each shape and highlighting the data with a color illustrator, the technology assembles a tissue profile that can be matched with other tissue profiles, according to YourScan.org. Via searches of mammograms of healthy women, those tissue profiles can detect DCIS in both 2D digital mammography and 3D breast tomosynthesis exams.
Mammograms can be donated through YourScan.org's website.
