Digital Breast Tomosynthesis and Digital Mammography Recall and False-Positive Rates by Time of Day and Reader Experience.

Background Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) image interpretation might be more cognitively demanding than interpretation of digital mammography (DM) images. The time of day of interpretation might affect recall and false-positive (FP) rates, especially for DBT. Purpose To determine whether recall and FP rates vary by time of day of interpretation for screening mammography for breast cancer performed with DM and DBT. Materials and Methods This is a retrospective study examining 97 671 screening mammograms interpreted by 18 radiologists between January 2018 and December 2019 at one of 12 community radiology sites. The association between the time of day of interpretation, the type of image interpreted (DM vs DBT), and radiologist experience (≤5 posttraining years vs >5 posttraining years) and the likelihood of a patient being recalled from screening mammography and the likelihood of whether the interpretation was FP or true positive were analyzed. Analyses were conducted using generalized linear mixed modeling with a binary distribution and sandwich estimation where observations were nested by radiologist. Results Screening mammograms interpreted by 18 radiologists were reviewed (40 220 DBTs, 57 451 DMs). Nine radiologists had 5 or fewer posttraining years of experience, and nine had more than 5 posttraining years of experience. The overall recall rates for DM (10.2%) and DBT (9.0%) were different ( = .006); FP rate also differed (9.8% DM, 8.6% DBT; = .004). For radiologists with 5 or fewer posttraining years of experience, odds of recall increased 11.5% (odds ratio [OR] = 1.12, = .01) with every hour when using DBT, but this was not found for DM (OR = 1.09, = .06); DBT and DM were different (OR = 1.12 vs 1.09, = .02). For radiologists with more than 5 posttraining years of experience, no evidence of increase in recall was observed for DBT (OR = 1.02, = .27) or DM (OR = 1.0, = .80), and there was no evidence that these were different (OR = 1.02 vs 1.0, = .13). Conclusion Patients were more likely to be recalled when their screening digital breast tomosynthesis images were interpreted later in the day by less-experienced radiologists. © RSNA, 2022