Diagnostic Performance of Sonoelastography in Addition to Ultrasound in Investigating Breast Lesions: Can Concomitant Use of These Techniques Lead to Improvement of Differentiation?

Background: Sonoelastography (SE) is introduced as a complementarytechnique for ultrasoungraohy (US) to evaluate breast lesions. Thismethod isasedon tissue strain in response to compression and decompression. The current studywas designed to investigate the diagnostic performance of SE for differentiatingbetween benign and malignant breast lesions.Methods: A total of ۳۵ women with ۴۵ breast lesions who were referred to auniversity affiliated hospital in Tehran were enrolled. All patients were visited andexamined by a same radiologist. A five-point scale was applied for categorizinglesions in SE as malignant or benign. The results of US and SE were comparedwith histopathological results to calculate sensitivity and specificity of eachmentioned techniques.Results: Histopathological evaluations in ۱۲ cases were in favor ofmalignancy, and the rest were classified as benign. The sensitivity and specificityfor US were ۱۰۰% and ۶۹.۷%, respectively. On the other hand, SE obtained alower sensitivity (۵۸.۳%) and higher specificity (۹۰.۹%) in comparisonwithUS.Conclusions: simultaneous evaluation of suspicious breast lesions with bothUS and SE can have high sensitivity and specificity and prevent unnecessaryinvasive interventions.