Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a novel respiratory virus first identified in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. Symptoms vary from asymptomatic (particularly at younger ages) to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome. Death is estimated to occur in 1-2% of those who contract the disease; most of these occur in patients age 60 years and older. While COVID-19 is not known to have any effect on the breast or the risk of breast cancer, responsible leadership requires protection of our patients, staff, and radiologists in reducing potential exposure and disease, as well as the effective use of breast imaging staff and radiologists. Here we ask select leaders in breast imaging to respond either specifically or in general to the following questions:
1) What is necessary breast imaging?
2) What will be done if care will be delayed for 1 month? 2-3 months? Longer?
3) How are you protecting staff?
4) How are implementing social distancing?
5) What do breast radiologists do when the schedule is mostly cleared out?
6) What do staff do when the schedule is mostly cleared out?
Mammography is routinely used to screen for breast cancer. However, the radiological interpretation of mammogram images is complicated by the heterogeneous nature of normal breast tissue and the fact that cancers are often of the same radiographic density as normal tissue. In this work, we use wavelets to quantify spectral slopes of breast cancer cases and controls and demonstrate their value in classifying images. In addition, we propose asymmetry statistics to be used in forming features, which improve the classification result. For the best classification procedure, we achieve approximately 77% accuracy (sensitivity=73%, specificity=84%) in classifying mammograms with and without cancer.