DIAGNOSTIC VALUES OF SONOGRAPHIC ELASTOGRAPHY PARAMETERS IN BREAST LESIONS

Abstract

Background: Ultrasound is one of the imaging techniques used to screen and evaluate breast lesions. In particular, when combined with strain elastography, it has been shown to improve the diagnostic effectiveness of breast lesions in many studies. However, few studies have directly compared all three strain elastography methods to determine whether one is more accurate than the others.

Objectives: We aimed to evaluate and compare the sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic accuracy of the five-point elastography score (Tsukuba score), strain ratio (SR), and length ratio (E/B ratio) in suspected breast lesions correlate with pathology results as the gold standards.

Materials and methods: This is a cross-sectional descriptive study, 59 patients with 61 lesions were classified BIRADS from 3 to 5 after obtaining Strain elastography and B-mode ultrasound that have got histopathologic results at Can Tho Oncology Hospital from November 2022 to May 2024.

Results: In this study, there was a total of 61 lesions of 59 female patients aged 47.2±1.9  years, 26 were benign, and 35 were malignant, they mainly located in the upper outer quadrant. Sensitivity, specificity and accuracy rate of 86%, 81%, and 84% for the Tsukuba score. These of 97%, 79%, and 92% for E/B ratio (cutoff value 1.05, AUC 0.91), 60%, 89%, and 72% for SR (cutoff value 3.09, AUC 0.74) were obtained, respectively.

Conclusion: This study has shown that all three methods are valuable in evaluating breast lesions. Among them, the E/B ratio had the highest sensitivity and diagnostic accuracy, while the specificity of the strain ratio was superior to the others.