title: Elastography for breast cancer diagnosis: a useful tool for small and BI-RADS 4 lesions.
abstract: The present study aimed at evaluating and comparing the diagnostic performance of B-mode ultrasound (US), elastography score (ES), and strain ratio (SR) for the differentiation of breast lesions. This retrospective study enrolled 431 lesions from 417 in-hospital patients. All patients were examined with both conventional ultrasound and elastography. Two experienced radiologists reviewed ultrasound and elasticity images. The histopathologic result obtained from ultrasound-guided core biopsy or operation excisions were used as the reference standard. Pathologic examination revealed 276 malignant lesions (64%) and 155 benign lesions (36%). A cut-off point of 4.15 (area under the curve, 0.891) allowed significant differentiation of malignant and benign lesions. ROC (receiver-operating characteristic) curves showed a higher value for combination of B-mode ultrasound and elastography for the diagnosis of breast lesions. Conventional ultrasound combined elastography showed high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for group II lesions (10mm<lesion diameter ≤20mm). Elastography combined with conventional ultrasound show high specificity and accuracy for differentiation of benign and malignant breast lesions. Elastography is particularly important for the diagnosis of BI-RADS 4 and small breast lesions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Breast Imaging, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, National Clinical Research Center for Cancer. Key Laboratory of Cancer Prevention and Therapy; Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer Prevention and Therapy, Tianjin Medical University, Ministry of Education, Tianjin, China E-mail : cjr.liupeifang@vip.163.com.
authors.forename: Xue-Jing
authors.initials: XJ
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Pei-Fang
authors.initials: PF
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yi-Lin
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D019540:Area Under Curve; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000145:classification* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D018270:Carcinoma, Ductal, Breast / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D054459:Elasticity Imaging Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D016217:Ultrasonography, Mammary / Q000379:methods*; D055815:Young Adult