The University of Sydney, in partnership with BreastScreen New South Wales and Ziltron, has developed a web-based program to monitor the performance of radiologists in detecting and diagnosing abnormalities in breast screens.

 

The BREAST Project, currently commencing a nationwide rollout, has the potential to improve early detection rates of breast cancer and reduce breast cancer mortality rates.

 

About 1.6 million women have mammograms each year in Australia, however, reading mammograms is one of the most challenging tasks in radiology according to Program Co-Director, Professor Patrick Brennan from the University of Sydney's Faculty of Health Sciences.

 

BreastScreen Australia aims to maximise the number of breast cancers diagnosed early, enabling early treatment and improving outcomes for women. Key to this is providing feedback and support to image readers.

 

The BreastScreen Reader Assessment Strategy (BREAST) is based on a world-first web-based program of digital screen-reading test sets designed to assess the performance of the user in correctly identifying abnormalities on mammograms and in interpreting whether or not the lesions identified pose a risk of breast cancer.

 

"The strength of the project is the comprehensive collection of breast X-rays which form the test sets," says Professor Brennan. "They have been developed in partnership with BreastScreen NSW and thoroughly validated through subsequent scans and biopsy."

 

The Ziltron web-based system with its unique embedded algorithm allows for the provision of real-time and instant evaluation and feedback to participating radiologists and will also enable the development of national performance standards based on confidential data collection.