Simulation of 3D DLA masses in digital breast tomosynthesis

Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is suggested to have superior performance compared to 2D mammography in terms of cancer visibility, especially in the case of dense breasts. However, the overall performance of tomosynthesis for screening applications, and the manner in which tomosynthesis should be optimally used for screening remains unclear. This motivates the development of software tools that can insert user-defined synthetic pathology of realistic appearance into clinical tomosynthesis images for subsequent use in virtual clinical trials. We present a method for inserting lesions grown using Diffusion Limited Aggregation, previously validated in 2D mammograms, into clinical DBT images. A preliminary pilot study was used to validate the realism of the masses, wherein three readers each viewed 19 cases and rated the realism of the inserted masses. Each case included a simulated mass inserted in the tomosynthesis projections and the counterpart digital 2D mammogram. These results show that masses can be successfully embedded in the tomosynthesis projections and can produce visually authentic DBT images containing synthetic pathology. These results will be used to further optimize the appearance of these masses in DBT for an upcoming validation.

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