Using simple mathematical functions to simulate pathological structures--input for digital mammography clinical trial.

In this study a set of structures has been simulated to represent a range of clinically relevant breast cancer mammographic lesions including solid tumours and microcalcifications. All structures have been created using simple random-based mathematical functions and have been inserted into a subset of digital mammography images at appropriate contrast levels into various regions of the breast, including dense fibroglandular and adipose tissue. These structures and their appearance in these clinical images were evaluated in terms of how realistic they looked. They will be used as the input to a large-scale clinical trial designed to examine the effect of significant dose reduction in digital mammography by comparing the detectability of such structures in images acquired at full and quarter automatic exposure control (AEC) dose level and in images with simulated noise levels in between.