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Subject Area

Cardiology

Article Type

Original Study

Abstract

Objectives The aim of this study was to study the diagnostic performance of elastography in characterization of solid breast masses. Background Elastography is an imaging modality that can calculate the elasticity of tissues, based on the well-established principle that benign lesions are soft and malignant lesions are hard. It is an easy procedure with high diagnostic performance, which can be easily integrated with the B-mode ultrasound examination in the same session to improve its specificity. Patients and methods A total of 30 female patients were included in this prospective study in the period from February 2016 to February 2017 with a complaint of breast mass. We examined the patients using ultrasonography and strain elastography. Then, we compared the findings of ultrasonography and elastography with pathology findings to assess their diagnostic performance. Results Among the 30 breast masses, 14 were benign and 16 were malignant. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of ultrasonography were 100, 43, 67, and 100%, respectively. Qualitative elastography (Tsukuba score) had a sensitivity of 69%, specificity of 86%, PPV of 85%, and NPV of 71%. Quantitative elastography, assessed using the strain ratio, was a good discriminant for malignancy (area under the receiver operating curve = 0.94, P = 0.001). Our results revealed a cutoff point for malignancy of more than2.7; by using this threshold, the diagnostic performance of the strain ratio was 94% sensitivity, 86% specificity, 88% PPV, and 92%NPV. Conclusion Elastography has great diagnostic performance in distinguishing between benign and malignant breast masses.

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