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Abstract Background Digital mammography (DM) serves as the primary breast imaging technique for early cancer detection and diagnosis. However, it faces certain limitations, particularly in imaging dense breasts. DM exhibits reduced sensitivity and specificity in women with radiographically dense breast tissue due to diminished contrast between potential tumors and surrounding tissue, as well as tissue summation potentially obscuring lesions. The aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic efficacy of digital breast tomosynthesis compared to digital mammography in evaluating suspicious breast lesions. The study included 60 female patients eligible for mammography. All participants underwent full-field digital mammography and 3d tomosynthesis. Written informed consent was obtained from all subjects after explaining the research’s purpose and benefits. The Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Medicine, Menoufia University approved the study under code no. 10/2022RADI24. Results Regarding BIRADS classification: All 60 patients were categorized using the BIRADS lexicon for both mammography and digital breast tomosynthesis. Mammography results showed BIRADS 3 in 10% (6/60), BIRADS 4a in 33.3% (20/60), 4b in 10% (6/60), BIRADS 4c in 26.7% (16/60), and BIRADS 5 in 20% (12/60) of cases. In comparison, tomosynthesis classified cases as BIRADS 3 in 13.3% (8/60), 4b in 16.7% (10/60), BIRADS 4c in 23.3% (14/60), and BIRADS 5 in 46.7% (28/60) of cases. Conclusions Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) has established itself as a significant advancement in three-dimensional breast imaging for both screening and diagnostic purposes. It exhibits enhanced performance in identifying breast abnormalities and generates images of superior diagnostic quality with improved precision compared to conventional digital mammography. This improvement is particularly notable when examining dense breast tissue, which has traditionally been one of the most challenging aspects of breast imaging.
Mousa et al. (Thu,) studied this question.