New results in computer aided diagnosis (CAD) of breast cancer using a recently developed SVM/GRNN oracle hybrid

Breast cancer is second only to lung cancer as a tumor-related cause of death in women. Currently, the method of choice for the early detection of breast cancer is mammography. While sensitive to the detection of non palpable breast lesions, its positive predictive value (PPV) is low, resulting in biopsies that are only 15%-34% likely to reveal malignancy. This paper explores the use of a recently designed Support Vector Machine (SVM)/Generalized Regression Neural Network (GRNN) Oracle hybrid to classify breast lesions and evaluate the software's performance as an interpretive aid to radiologists. The main objective of the research was to perform an independent analysis, using a new, integrated film screen mammogram data base of approximately 2500 cases from five separate institutions, to verify results obtained previously 14. This study demonstrated the following: The DE crossover constant has little, if any, effect on measures of performance (MOP). A specificity of approximately 5.6% is achieved at 100% sensitivity, which increases to approximately 36% at 95% sensitivity. PPV increases from 51 % to 56% as sensitivity is decreased from 100 to 95%, respectively.

Duke Scholars

Author Joseph Yuan-Chieh Lo Radiology