In this paper, we present a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system called MammoSVD. This CBIR system is developed based on breast density - fatty or dense, and the database used, from the IRMA project, provides images with the ground truth already set. Singular value decomposition (SVD) is proposed for the breast density characterization by the selection of the first singular values, in order to represent texture along with the dimensionality reduction. Support-vector machine (SVM) is used to perform the retrieval operation. Considering the first 10% of the retrieved images, the precision rate is 90%, indicating the potential of the implemented CBIR system. ©2009 IEEE.