Sonoelastography - A new paradigm in the characterization of breast lesions

TL;DR

Sonoelastography improves breast lesion diagnosis by increasing accuracy and reducing unnecessary biopsies compared to traditional methods.

Contribution

Sonoelastography is shown to be a valuable complementary tool to sonomammography in breast lesion characterization.

Findings

Sonoelastography has higher specificity (90%) and PPV (87%) compared to sonomammography.

Elastography reclassified 30% of benign lesions correctly, reducing unnecessary biopsies.

Diagnostic accuracy of sonoelastography is 82%, with 100% sensitivity in high-risk cases.

Abstract

The diagnostic performance of sonoelastography compared to conventional sonomammography in 136 patients with palpable breast lesions
at L.G. Hospital, Ahmedabad is of interest. Hence, patients underwent B-mode ultrasound, mammography, and real-time elastography, with
histopathology as the reference standard. Sonoelastography demonstrated higher specificity (90% vs. 60%), PPV (87% vs. 64%), and overall
diagnostic accuracy (82%) compared with sonomammography, while maintaining comparable sensitivity (93.3%). The addition of elastography
reclassified 30% of benign lesions correctly, reducing unnecessary biopsies and preserving 100% sensitivity in high-risk BIRADS categories.
Thus, we show that sonoelastography is a valuable complementary tool to sonomammography in breast lesion characterization.