Textural feature comparison between FFDM and film mammograms

In this work, we conducted an imaging study to make a direct, quantitative comparison of image features measured by film and full-field digital mammography (FFDM). We acquired images of cadaver breast specimens containing simulated microcalcifications using both a GE digital mammography system and a screen-film system. To quantify the image features, we calculated and compared a set of 12 texture features derived from spatial gray-level dependence matrices. Our results demonstrate that there is a great degree of agreement between film and FFDM, with the correlation coefficient of the feature vector (formed by the 12 textural features) being 0.9569 between the two; in addition, a paired sign test reveals no significant difference between film and FFDM features. These results indicate that textural features may be interchangeable between film and FFDM for CAD algorithms.