# The Usefulness of the Breast Density Assessment Application Used by Breast Radiologists

## TL;DR

This study evaluates whether a breast density assessment application improves radiologists' efficiency and accuracy in assessing breast density.

## Contribution

The study is the first to investigate whether breast radiologists benefit from using a breast density assessment application in terms of reading efficacy.

## Key findings

- The application significantly improved agreement between radiologists and the expert by 6.6%.
- The average evaluation time for 100 cases was reduced by 186.9 seconds when using the application.
- The sequential test did not show effectiveness of the application.

## Abstract

Breast density determined by breast radiologists and also automatically estimated by applications has been widely investigated. However, no study has yet clarified whether the use of these applications by breast radiologists improves reading efficacy. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the usefulness of applications when used by breast radiologists. A Breast Density Assessment application (App) developed by Konica Minolta, Inc. (Tokyo, Japan) was used. Independent and sequential tests were conducted to assess the usefulness of the concurrent- and second-look modes. Fifty and 100 cases were evaluated using sequential and independent tests, respectively. Each dataset was configured based on the evaluation by an expert breast radiologist who developed the Japanese guidelines for breast density. Nine breast radiologists evaluated the mammary gland content ratio and breast density; the inter-observer and expert-to-observer variability were calculated. The time required to complete the experiments was also recorded. The inter-observer variability was significant with the App, as revealed by the independent test. The use of the App significantly improved the agreement between the responses of the observers for the mammary gland content ratio and those of the expert by 6.6% and led to a reduction of 186.9 seconds in the average time required by the observers to evaluate 100 cases. However, the results of the sequential test did not suggest the effectiveness of the App. These findings suggest that the concurrent use of the App improves reading efficiency.