Osteoporosis screening in the mammography setting via digital wrist tomosynthesis

Abstract

Adherence to osteoporosis screening guidelines could be considerably higher if offered at the time of routine mammography using the same imaging modality. We found that forearm density measurements using a breast imaging system provides density information with excellent diagnostic capability for osteoporosis and osteopenia status determined by hip and spine DXA.

Purpose: Adherence to osteoporosis screening guidelines via bone mineral density (BMD) measurements with dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is low. Since adherence to breast cancer screening is quite high, it was suggested that the rate of osteoporosis screening can be improved if wrist imaging were performed at the time of breast screening using the very same equipment.

Methods: Digital wrist tomosynthesis (DWT) imaging was performed in 150 women using a 3D mammography system and BMD was measured from both 3D tomosynthesis and synthesized 2D images. In addition, standard DXA based BMD measurements were performed at the hip, spine, and forearm sites. We examined the extent to which DWT-derived ultradistal radius BMD correlates with DXA based BMD measurements, evaluated DWT measurement precision errors, and determined the accuracy of DWT in diagnosing low bone mass and osteoporosis in vivo.

Results: DWT BMD strongly correlated with DXA-derived ultradistal radius BMD (R2 up to 0.814) and discriminated osteoporosis (AUC up to 0.978) and osteopenia (AUC up to 0.938) by ultradistal T-score with low in vivo precision errors (0.91-2.3%). BMD derived from 3D DWT BMD performed comparably to forearm DXA BMD in the diagnosis of osteopenia (AUC up to 0.916) and osteoporosis (AUC up to 0.946) determined by hip and spine DXA.

Conclusions: DWT can be readily implemented in mammography settings with similar diagnostic accuracy to DXA, has the potential to increase adherence to osteoporosis screening recommendations, and offers a convenient means to measure bone density within the highly accessible breast screening environment.

Keywords: Bone health screening prevalence; Breast exam workflow; Digital tomosynthesis imaging; Distal forearm; Dual energy x-ray absorptiometry; Osteoporosis diagnosis.