Power spectral analysis of mammographic parenchymal patterns

Mammographic density and parenchymal patterns have been shown to be associated with the risk of developing breast cancer. Two groups of women: gene-mutation carriers and low-risk women were included in this study. Power spectral analysis was performed within parenchymal regions of 172 digitized craniocaudal normal mammograms of the BRCA1/BRCA2 gene-mutation carriers and those of women at low-risk of developing breast cancer. The power law spectrum of the form, P(f)=B/fβ was evaluated for the mammographic patterns. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to assess the performance of exponent β as a decision variable in the task of distinguishing between high and low-risk subjects. Power spectral analysis of mammograms demonstrated that mammographic parenchymal patterns have a power-law spectrum of the form, P(f)=B/fβ where f is radial spatial frequency, with the average β values of 2.92 and 2.47 for the gene-mutation carriers and for the low-risk women, respectively. Az values of 0.90 and 0.89 were achieved in distinguishing between the gene-mutation carriers and the low-risk women with the individual image β value as the decision variable in the entire database and the age-matched group, respectively.