Summary

Breast carcinoma is the second largest cancer in the world among women. Early detection of breast cancer has been shown to increase the survival rate, thereby significantly increasing patients' lifespans. Mammography, a noninvasive imaging tool with low cost, is widely used to diagnose breast disease at an early stage due to its high sensitivity. The recent popularization of artificial intelligence in computer-aided diagnosis creates opportunities for advances in areas such as (1) Computer-aided detection for locating suspect lesions such as mass and microcalcification, leaving the classification to the radiologist; and (2) Computer-aided diagnosis for characterizing the suspicious region of lesion and/or estimate its probability of onset; and (3) Findings of predictive image-based biomarkers by applying the computational methods to mine the potential relationships between image representation and molecular subtype, including luminal A, luminal B, HER2 positive, and Triple-negative.

However, existing publicly available mammography databases are limited by small sample size, lack of diversity in patient populations, missing biopsy confirmations and unknown molecular sub-types.  To help fill the gap, we built a database conducted on 1,775 patients from China with benign or malignant breast disease who underwent mammography examination between July 2012 and January 2016. The database consists of 3,728 mammographies from these 1,775 patients, with biopsy confirmed type of benign or malignant tumors. For 749 of these patients (1,498 mammographies) we also include patients' molecular subtypes. Image data were acquired on a GE Senographe DS mammography system.