With the recent advent of the aging era and the improvement of people's living standards, there is a tendency that a concern about an early diagnosis and a treatment of diseases for enjoying a healthy life gradually has increased and cancer among various diseases has become the most important cause of threatening people's health as the first place of a cause of Korean people's death.
According to the Cancer Registration Headquarter, part of the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs, it is estimated that approximately 130,000 or more new cancer patients occur every year in Korean and the incidence rate thereof obtained by using the number of cancer occurrence cases registered from 2003 to 2005 reaches 300.0 cases for a male and 248.2 cases for a female per population of 100,000.
Further, in the case of dividing the occurred cancers in accordance with types thereof, occurrence rate is high in the order of stomach cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, and colorectal cancer which occupy 66% in total occurred cancer in the case of males, while breast cancer is the higher in cancer occurrence rate than four main cancers in the order of the breast cancer, thyroid cancer, the stomach cancer, the colorectal cancer, and the lung cancer in the case of females.
As such, in the case of the female, early diagnosing and treating the breast cancer which is highest in occurrence rate is considered as an important factor which should be preceded so as for the female to enjoy a healthy life.
However, in the case of mammography mainly used for diagnosing the breast cancer for an asymptomatic female among breast cancer diagnosing methods, since a photographing result using an X-ray is a 2D image, a lesion of an interest region overlaps with a normal tissue, and as a result, it is difficult to detect micro-calcification which is an important factor in early diagnosis of the breast cancer.
Further, since a difference in X-ray absorption rate in a breast tissue and cancer is very small, a distinguishing capability is low, and as a result, there is a high possibility that breast false positive or breast false negative result will occur and actually, a diagnosis probability of the breast false positive result reaches 30% in a medical diagnosis field.
In particular, in the case of the breast false negative result that judges the person to be diagnosed as normal or positive even though the person to be diagnosed has the breast cancer, a patient is wrongly set at ease by disregarding the breast cancer and a mistake in which the breast cancer is late diagnosed is made, and as a result, the breast false negative serves as a main factor that threatens patient's health and causes a legal problem in view of a medical malpractice
Accordingly, development of a breast cancer diagnosing method having high accuracy is significantly required to prevent additional examinations such as unnecessary rephotographing and biopsy by reducing a probability of the false positive result and the false negative result in diagnosing the breast cancer.