Faculty of Medicine and Health

BREAST Newsletter

Edition 6, December 2023

BREAST workshop success at RANZCR!

Another wonderful event at RANZCR, this time located in the lovely city of Brisbane on October 18-21st. Our 3.5-day workshop was a complete success, having every session booked out; that's 78 sessions in total!

At this recent workshop, BREAST released our new 2D test set called Calcification (containing 30 cases), with great feedback. Many radiologists were appreciative of its creation, acknowledging that calcification cases can be rather difficult to interpret. Another popular test set was our new Junior training test set, which was originally released earlier this year at the Breast Imaging Group (BIG) conference in March. Also containing 30 cases, this test set is aimed at radiology trainees and junior radiologists, providing more descriptive feedback upon completion to assist readers with less experience in reading mammograms.

Additionally, our research fellow Dr Yun Trieu gave a wonderful presentation titled ' Does time have an impact on the improvement of diagnostic accuracy of readers in BREAST test sets?'

For anyone who visited the trade display area, we stumbled across these gorgeous rubber ducks dressed up and couldn't help ourselves taking a photo and squirreling a couple of them on the plane home.

Once again, we wish to thank all of our readers and colleagues who came to do test sets during RANZCR and we very much hope to see you all again next year.

If you want to know what's coming up with BREAST, feel free to head to our website with all the latest information, news, publications and our previous newsletter editions.

View our website >

BREAST Director presented at the Symposium Mammographicum in Glasgow

BREAST was successful in getting an abstract accepted to present in Glasgow at the Symposium Mammographicum in June from 21-23 this year.

Sarah enthusiastically took up the opportunity to present our work titled 'Imaging and breast cancer characteristics that influence Artificial Intelligence output and detection'. This work is funded by our National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) grant that we were successful in obtaining in late 2021, which aims at developing an effective AI model for breast cancer screening.

We welcome our newest BREAST member

It is our pleasure to introduce Dr Dania Abu Awwad who has recently joined the BREAST team. Dania completed her PhD at The University of Sydney from the School of Health Sciences. Trained as a radiographer, she is now a lecturer within the School and is a strong researcher on multiple projects. We are so excited she accepted our offer to join BREAST and know there can only be great things ahead for us as a team.

BREAST-Vietnam workshop

At the end of last year, Dr Yun Trieu successfully won a Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) grant, which funded $15,000 to host a BREAST-Vietnam 3-day workshop in Hanoi last month.

Yun, Sarah and our newest BREAST team member, Dr Dania Abu Awwad, travelled to Hanoi in mid-November and ran a workshop at the National Cancer Hospital, along with local radiologist Dr Oanh.

With special guest speakers via Zoom; Dr Garvin Williamsz (Radiologist), Dr Jenny O'Sullivan (Breast Physician) and Assoc Prof Jillian Clarke (Sonographer), the workshop was jam-packed with learning experiences for the local Vietnamese radiologists who hope to take away key skills to train their own registrars and take a step closer to improving Vietnam's breast screening program.

This Vietnam-BREAST partnership first began in 2019 when the project VIETRAD was successful in obtaining funding and this latest workshop aimed to consolidate skills and foster future relationships. Well done BREAST team and colleagues on this amazing achievement!

BREAST work presented at the ASBD conference in Adelaide

Our postdoctorual fellow, Dr Zhengquang (Howard) Jiang, gave a wonderful poster presentation in September at the Australian Society Breast Diseases (ASBD) conference in Adelaide.

Titled 'The investigation of AI models on cancer sizes of screening mammograms', it was wonderful to have BREAST work be showcased at this event. This work is also funded by the same NBCF as mentioned above, aiming to improve breast screening with the implementation of an AI model.

Double presentation fun at the NSW Cancer Conference in Sydney

In October, our research fellow Yun and research assistant Jayden presented their work at the NSW Cancer Conference held in Sydney, with both abstracts successful for posters.

Yun's research is in collaboration with radiologist Dr Marion Dimigen (pictured with Yun), and their poster was titled 'Enhanced diagnostic efficacy in breast radiology via Artificial Intelligence education: A preliminary study'. This work is part of a project funded by their jointly-awarded seed grant under the Sydney Cancer Institute Scheme; a collaboration initiative between Sydney Local Health District, Chris O'Brien Lifehouse and the University of Sydney.

Whilst Jayden is busy completing his medical degree, he also works with us on small projects and had the chance to present his work titled 'Diagnostic performance of Australian breast surgical trainees compared to radiology trainees in breast cancer detection via BREAST test sets'. Congratulations to all!

BREAST Research News

Opportunity to volunteer for a BREAST study - participants still needed!

Our research is always about conducting studies that aim to improve breast screening capabilities and experience. If you are interested in giving up some of your time, please get in contact with us via email as we are looking for volunteers for these two studies that will continue running into 2024. Both these projects can be done virtually, they do not need to be carried out on-site at Sydney University.

Study 1:

Explore the effectiveness of individualised training test sets when applying intelligent algorithm support to readers who interpret screening mammograms. The AI will harness the weaknesses and strengths of individual readers and assign the readers to targeted training cases to enhance the diagnositc efficacy in breast cancer detection.

Study 2:

A PhD research project that will investigate the influence of prior mammograms on diagnostic performance. The purpose is to explore the impact of access to prior mammograms on the accurate interpretation by BreastScreen readers, and to identify the characteristics of cases and readers that will benefit from accessing previous mammograms. This work involves our BREAST test sets that encompass a new 2D mammography test set, as well as our DBT Sydney and our junior training sets. If you have done either our DBT Sydney or Junior test set, please get in touch so we can asign the 'no priors' version of these test sets to your account.

Follow BREAST on X (formally Twitter)

Lastly, for more information on what's happening with BREAST, you are most welcome to view our website, where you will find information on past projects, funding, news, and other related information or follow us on X @syd_BREAST.

Seasons Greetings

We wish every one of our readers, colleagues and esteemed volunteers who tirelessly help us out with events, a very Merry Christmas. We hope you have a wonderful break and all the very best for 2024.

Kindest regards from the BREAST team,

Sarah, Yun, Dania, Howard, Jayden and Mel

Keep in touch

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