Application of Machine Learning for Mean Glandular Dose Prediction Utilizing DICOM Mammography Images

The growing demand for raw and processed scientific data has encouraged many researchers and research institutions to adopt an open-source data policy. At present, data accessibility is of paramount importance due to the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications in various scientific fields, particularly medicine. Medium- to large-scale mammography datasets are widely used in breast cancer research to develop and evaluate computer-aided detection methods. However, there are only a few studies on using mammogram datasets for the prediction of the breast mean glandular dose (MGD) with AI or ML models. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of using ML and deep ML for MGD prediction based on DICOM images and retrieved dosimetric data from DICOM mammogram images. A total of 26,988 mammography images in DICOM format were obtained from the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR). Eleven regression algorithms and three neural network-based models were evaluated using five-fold cross-validation. In addition, a deep ML fusion model based on Vision Transformer (ViT) and tabular data was developed for the prediction of the MGD normalized conversion factor CF(DgN). A mean breast thickness of 61.37 mm and a mean MGD of 1.53 mGy (0.55–6.33 mGy) were calculated using this dataset. Regarding tabular data, the artificial neural network (ANN) sequential models outperformed other linear and tree-based models. The ViT deep ML fusion model was tested with three configuration versions differing on the number of features included. A comparison of the three versions revealed that the version with six features achieved the best overall predictor performance. This study demonstrates that ML and deep ML can effectively predict the MGD using dosimetric tabular data and mammography DICOM images. The use of ML with tabular data extracted from DICOM images can be further strengthened by incorporating larger and more diverse datasets.