Landmark Regression with Attention U-Net for Assessing Breast Positioning Quality in MLO Mammography View

Abstract

Background/Objectives: This study developed and evaluated a novel Attention U-Net regression model to assess MLO mammography positioning quality, comparing it against a plain U-Net regression baseline (architectural ablation) and a ResNeXt50 classification baseline. Methods: We curated 1000 patient mammograms (2000 MLO images) from the public VinDr-Mammo dataset, with pectoral muscle line and nipple positions annotated by an expert breast radiologist. Three deep learning models were compared under a 10-fold stratified cross-validation protocol. Statistical significance was assessed with paired Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, McNemar's test, Cochran's Q, Wilson score confidence intervals, bootstrap confidence intervals, Holm-Bonferroni correction, and paired Cohen's d effect sizes. Results: Against the automated PNL reference, the Attention U-Net achieved 85.5% accuracy (Wilson 95% CI [83.9%, 87.0%]), 80.2% sensitivity, and 88.7% specificity, outperforming both the plain U-Net (71.8% accuracy) and ResNeXt50 (73.7% accuracy). (Cochran's Q p < 0.001; pairwise McNemar p < 0.001). For landmark localization, the Attention U-Net produced significantly lower errors across all five evaluated landmark and geometric measures (nipple 3.44 mm vs. 7.02 mm; perpendicular intersection 5.93 mm vs. 9.81 mm; all comparisons remained significant after Holm-Bonferroni correction). Conclusions: In this single-dataset, single-view study, an Attention U-Net landmark-regression model provided explicit landmark and PNL outputs for quantitative MLO mammography positioning assessment. The model showed improved accuracy and sensitivity compared with a plain U-Net regression baseline and a ResNeXt50 classification baseline.