title: Speckle reduction imaging of breast ultrasound does not improve the diagnostic performance of morphology-based CAD System.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Speckle reduction imaging (SRI) is a newly developed technique in ultrasound examination. This study aimed to compare the diagnostic performance of SRI and non-SRI breast ultrasound examinations by using a morphology-based computer-aided diagnostic system.
  
  
  METHODS
  One hundred ten patients with pathologically proven breast lesions were enrolled consecutively from April 2008 to October 2008. SRI and non-SRI ultrasound images were both obtained at the same examination for each patient. The regions of interest were manually sketched by an experienced physician without histological information. Nineteen practical morphologic features from the extracted contour were calculated and a support vector machine classifier identified the breast tumor as benign or malignant. Conventional binomial receiver operating characteristics curve analysis was used to represent the diagnostic performance of both SRI and non-SRI.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Between SRI and non-SRI methods, there were no significant differences in the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (Az value: 0.82 versus 0.81), the sensitivity (78.9% versus 84.2%), and the specificity (73.6% versus 70.8%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Based on the morphology study, the performance of breast ultrasound in characterizing the solid breast mass as benign or malignant was not significantly improved with SRI.
authors.affiliation: Comprehensive Breast Cancer Center, Changhua Christian Hospital, Changhua, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hsin-Shun
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Tseng
authors.forename: Hwa-Koon
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Shou-Tung
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Shou-Jen
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Kuo
authors.forename: Yu-Len
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Dar-Ren
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012372:ROC Curve; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D016217:Ultrasonography, Mammary / Q000379:methods*