Can digital breast tomosynthesis improve identification of malignant calcifications?

Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is an emerging imaging tool for both the screening and diagnosis of breast cancers. However, the use of DBT in diagnosis of calcifications remains ambiguous. In this study, we investigated DBT findings that might help differentiate between benign and malignant calcifications. We enrolled 256 subjects and evaluated 303 breasts with grouped or segmental calcifications. All imaging examinations were performed using two-directional full-field digital mammography (FFDM) and DBT. We divided subjects into two groups, namely, "dense" and "fatty," based on the quantity of breast tissue and evaluated whether the growth of cancer causes increased the density overlapping with calcifications. Increased overlapping density was significantly associated with malignant calcifications (p < 0.001), and the identification of increased density was more accurate using DBT than using FFDM. Furthermore, we used DBT to evaluate whether segmental calcifications were continuous or discontinuous. Significantly more malignant than benign calcifications were associated with a continuous distribution (p = 0.035). Increased density overlapping with grouped calcifications was significantly associated with invasive cancers (p = 0.017). The findings of this study suggest that DBT improves the ability to differentiate between benign and malignant calcifications.