Compliance of Publicly Available Mammographic Databases with Established Case Selection and Annotation Requirements

Mammographic databases play an important role in the development of algorithms aiming to improve Computer-Aided Detection and Diagnosis systems (CAD). However, these often do not take into consideration all the requirements needed for a proper study, previously discussed at the Biomedical Image Processing Meeting in 1993. Case selection and annotation requirements are the most commonly referenced in literature, when describing a database used for the development of such algorithms. This work aims to assess the compliance and suitability of case selection and annotation requirements in the publicly available mammographic databases for development and optimization of CADs. A literature review has been made, applying proper selection criteria related to the research question. In the literature, we found citations to 3 publicly available mammographic databases and ten having restricted access. Through the analysis of the results attained, we noticed that none of the two requirements previously described is on its way to be fully complied in mammographic databases. We can conclude that researchers need a database that fulfils all the mentioned requirements in order to develop efficacious and effective CAD systems. We also believe that the requirements, discussed in 1993, need to be reviewed and updated. New paradigms and ideas to increase algorithms' performance are needed in order to improve CAD schemes.