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OPTIMAM Mammography Image Database: a large scale resource of mammography images and clinical data

A major barrier to medical imaging research and in particular the development of artificial intelligence (AI) is a lack of large databases of medical images which share images with other researchers. Without such databases it is not possible to train generalisable AI algorithms, and large amounts of time and funding is spent collecting smaller datasets at individual research centres. The OPTIMAM image database (OMI-DB) has been developed to overcome these barriers. OMI-DB consists of several relational databases and cloud storage systems, containing mammography images and associated clinical and pathological information. The database contains over 2.5 million images from 173,319 women collected from three UK breast screening centres. This includes 154,832 women with normal breasts, 6909 women with benign findings, 9690 women with screen-detected cancers and 1888 women with interval cancers. Collection is on-going and all women are followed-up and their clinical status updated according to subsequent screening episodes. The availability of prior screening mammograms and interval cancers is a vital resource for AI development. Data from OMI-DB has been shared with over 30 research groups and companies, since 2014. This progressive approach has been possible through sharing agreements between the funder and approved academic and commercial research groups. A research dataset such as the OMI-DB provides a powerful resource for research.