Dear AuntMinnie Member,
It's no secret that women with denser breast tissue have a higher risk of cancer than women who do not. But a new study published this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute shows that women with a greater variation in density could also be at higher risk.
Researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, developed an automated method of estimating breast density based on full-field digital mammography studies. They then assessed density variation in the images and compared it to rates of breast cancer in two groups of women, one with and one without the disease.
They found that, as with the percent of density in breast tissue, density variation can also indicate cancer risk. The results highlight the importance of developing and using tools for measuring breast density that fit easily into a mammography practice's workflow.
Learn more by clicking here, or visit the Women's Imaging Digital Community at women.auntminnie.com.
Compression for combat teleradiology
In other news, performing radiology from a combat zone has obvious challenges. One of them is the difficulty of transmitting large medical images over the sometimes spotty communications networks available on the front lines.
One solution is file compression, according to a new article in our PACS Digital Community. A group from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the U.S. National Institutes of Health explored the use of the commercially available MPEG-4 compression algorithm to convert DICOM files into data that are more easily transmitted.
The researchers experimented with different compression ratios, and at the highest extreme they were able to convert 73-MB DICOM files to MPEG-4 files of less than half a megabyte. Were such images still diagnostically useful? Maybe not for primary review, but they could work for preliminary interpretation or consultations, the researchers proposed.
Read all about it by clicking here, or visit the PACS Digital Community at pacs.auntminnie.com.
